Letters on Revival or REVIVAL FIRE
by Charles G. Finney
To the Students of the Words, Works and Ways of God:
Introduction
Letter 1 Superficial Revivals
Letter 2 Unhealthy Revival Excitement
Letter 3 A Cause Of Spurious Conversions
Letter 4 Errors That Hinder Revivals
Letter 5 Erroneous Revival Preaching
Letter 6 Excitement In Revivals
Letter 7 Fanatical Excitement
Letter 8 Excitement In Revivals
Letter 9 Why So Few Revivals?
Letter 10 Causes Of The Decline Of Revivals
Letter 11 The Impolicy Of Spasmodic Efforts
Letter 12 Hindrances To A Revival Spirit
Letter 13 Objections To Protracted Meetings
Letter 14 Hindrances To Revivals
Letter 15 The Pernicious Attitude Of The Church On The
Reforms Of The Age
Letter 16 The Folly Of Attempting To Sustain True Religion
Without Revivals
INTRODUCTORY TO ALL THE FRIENDS, AND ESPECIALLY ALL THE
MINISTERS OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
Beloved in the Lord, - Many of you are aware that several years since
a series of lectures on the subject of revivals was published through the
columns of the New York "Evangelist." These lectures were preached by
me to my own congregation in the city of New York, and reported by the
editor of that paper. Since the publication of those lectures, my
observation and experience on the subject have been continually
developing and ripening, until I am very desirous of saying many
additional things to my brethren on this subject.
When I first began to preach, I was without knowledge and without
experience on the subject of revivals. I had but a very limited Christian
experience. The Lord led me in a way that I knew not. I have recently
thought that it might be useful to the Churches, to communicate to them
my ripened experience and convictions upon the same subject.....
I wish the brethren particularly to understand that I lay no claim of
infallibility upon this subject. I only wish to give my opinions with that
modesty which becomes my ignorance, and which is demanded also by the
nature of the subject.
I have had a continual experience upon the subject of revivals of religion,
now for about twenty years; in the course of which experience, I have
watched narrowly ;and with much solicitude the various types,
developments, results, and indeed all the phenomena pertaining to them,
and resulting from them. I have occasionally seen remarks in some of the
newspapers assuming that, since my residence in Oberlin, I have ceased to
witness powerful revivals of religion in connection with my labors and the
labors of those connected with me but this is a great mistake, as my
brethren generally would have been informed had not some of the leading
papers which have made the assumption just mentioned, declined giving to
the public the facts as they are and have been. I do not mention this either
to censure those editors, or to boast of the success of my own labors and
of those associated with me, but simply to bespeak your unbiased
attention to what I have to say as coming, not from one whose observation
and experience in revivals have long ago ceased, but from one whose
opportunities for observation and experience have continued in their
freshness up to the present hour.
Since I have been here, my position at home and my observation abroad,
have given me peculiar advantages for judging of the expediency and
inexpediency of certain measures. I have seen powerful revivals in this
place, from time to time, now for about ten years, and indeed the state of
things has generally been such here as would elsewhere have been
considered a revival state. Scarcely a week, or even a day, has passed
without more or less cases coming under my observation of manifest
Divine influence. I have had an opportunity to witness the results of
revivals in their influence over young men preparing for the ministry, over
ministers themselves, over the community at large, and for years after their
occurrence. I have marked with the deepest interest their rise, their
progress, their temporary decline, and again their revival, the various types
they have taken on, and the occasion of these modifications.....
There is a considerable number of topics to which I desire to call the
attention of my brethren. In the providence of God, I have witnessed a
great variety of methods in conducting revivals. When I first began to be
acquainted with them, and for about ten years of my earliest labors, what
are now termed protracted meetings were not known; since which, these
meetings, first styled "conferences of Churches," then "three-days'
meetings," then "four-days' meetings," and subsequently "protracted
meetings," extending continuously through several weeks, have been the
order of the day. In respect to the expediency as manifested in the results
of these different methods, I have several things to say, to which I invite
the prayerful consideration of all classes of Christians: also with respect to
the great care that should be taken to prevent their degenerating into a
spirit of fanaticism and misrule, as in at least some instances they
manifestly have done. I wish also to call the attention of the brethren to
the occasions of those disastrous results.
Your brother, C. G. FINNEY
LETTER I
SUPERFICIAL REVIVALS
I have observed, and multitudes of others also I find have observed.
that for the last ten years, revivals of religion have been gradually
becoming more and more superficial. All the phenomena which they
exhibit testify to this as a general fact. There is very much less deep
conviction of sin and deep depth of humility, and much less strength in all
the graces exhibited by converts in late revivals, than in the converts from
the revivals which occurred about 1830 and 1831 and for some time
previous. I have observed, as have others also, that revivals are of much
shorter duration, and that a reaction comes on much more suddenly and
disastrously than formerly. Also, that fewer of the converts make stable
and efficient Christians; that those who do persevere, appear to have less
of the Spirit of Christ than in former revivals; - not so much of the spirit
of prayer, and are not so modest and humble. In short, all the phenomena
of the more recent revivals, judging from my own experience and
observation and from the testimony of other witnesses, show that they
have at least very extensively, taken on a much less desirable type than
formerly.
Christians are much less spiritual in revivals, much less prevalent in
prayer, not so deeply humbled and quickened and thoroughly baptized
with the Holy Ghost as they were formerly. These statements I do not
suppose to be universally applicable to modern revivals, but I do believe
them to be applicable generally. As revivals now exist, I believe ministers
arc not nearly as desirous of seeing them in their congregations as they
formerly were, nor have they good reason to be. Those ministers who have
witnessed none but the later revivals of which I speak, are almost afraid of
revivals. They have seen the disastrous results of modern revivals so
frequently, that they honestly entertain the doubt whether they are, upon
the whole, desirable. Those, as I have good reason to know, who saw the
revivals which occurred ten or twenty years ago, greatly prefer revivals of
that type. They are distressed with the superficiality of many recent
revivals. I make this as a general, not a universal remark, and state only my
own opinion of public sentiment. I have often heard it said, both among
ministers and private Christians, We long to see the days return when we
shall have such revivals as we saw years ago. I have been anxiously
watching the progress of things in this direction, and inquiring as carefully
and prayerfully as I could into the causes which are operating to produce
these results. If I am not misinformed, and have not greatly
misapprehended the case, the following will be found among them:
1. There is much less probing of the heart by a deep and thorough
exhibition of human depravity, than was formerly the case. It has been of
late a common remark, and a brothel who has long labored as an evangelist
made the same remark, that for the last few years there has been little or
no opposition made by impenitent sinners to revivals. Now it is not
because the carnal mind is not still enmity against God, but I greatly fear it
is for the want of thoroughly turning up to the light the deep foundations
of this enmity in their hearts. The unutterable depravity of the human
heart has not, I fear, been laid open to the very bottom as it formerly was.
A few sermons on the subject of moral depravity are generally preached in
every revival, but I fear this is by no means the great theme of the
preaching so much and so long as it ought to be, in order thoroughly to
break up the fallow ground of the sinner's and the professor's heart. From
my own experience and observation, as well as from the Word of God, I
am fully convinced that the character of revivals depends very much upon
the stress that is laid upon the depravity of the heart. Its pride, enmity,
windings, deceitfulness, and everything else that is hateful to God, should
be exposed in the light of His perfect law.
2. I fear that stress enough is not laid upon the horrible guilt of this
depravity. Pains enough is not taken, by a series of pointed and cutting
discourses, to show the sinner the utter inexcusableness, the unutterable
wickedness and guilt, of his base heart. No revival can be thorough until
sinners and backsliders are so searched and humbled, that they can not
hold up their heads. It is a settled point with me, that while backsliders
and sinners can come to an anxious meeting, and hold up their heads and
look you and others in the face without blushing and confusion, the work
of searching is by no means performed, and they are in no state to be
thoroughly broken down and converted to God. I wish to call the attention
of my brethren especially to this fact. When sinners and backsliders are
really convicted by the Holy Ghost, they are greatly ashamed of
themselves. Until they manifest deep shame, it should be known that the
probe is not used sufficiently, and they do not see themselves as they
ought. When I go into a meeting of inquiry and look over the multitudes, if
I see them with heads up, looking at me and at each other, I have learned to
understand what work I have to do. Instead of pressing them immediately
to come to Christ, I must go to work to convict them of sin. Generally, by
looking over the room, a minister can tell, not only who are convicted and
who are not, but who are so deeply convicted as to be prepared to receive
Christ.
Some are looking around, and manifest no shame at all; others can not look
you in the face, and yet can hold up their heads; others still can not hold
up their heads, and yet are silent; others, by their sobbing, and breathing,
and agonizing, reveal at once the fact that the sword of the Spirit has
wounded them to their very heart. Now, I have learned that a revival never
does take on a desirable and wholesome type any further than the
preaching and means are so directed, and so efficient as to produce that
kind of genuine and deep conviction which breaks the sinner and the
backslider right down, and makes him unutterably ashamed and
confounded before the Lord, until he is not only stripped of every excuse,
but driven to go all lengths in justifying God and condemning himself.
3. I have thought that, at least in a great many instances, stress enough has
not been laid upon the necessity of Divine influence upon the hearts of
Christians and of sinners. I am confident that I have sometimes erred in
this respect myself. In order to rout sinners and backsliders from their
self-justifying pleas and refuges, I have laid, and I doubt not that others
also have laid, too much stress upon the natural ability of sinners, to the
neglect of showing them the nature and extent of their dependence upon
the grace of God and the influence of His Spirit. This has grieved the Spirit
of God. His work not being honored by being made sufficiently
prominent, and not being able to get the glory to Himself of His own
work, He has withheld His influences. In the meantime, multitudes have
been greatly excited by the means used to promote an excitement, and have
obtained hopes, without ever knowing the necessity of the presence and
powerful agency of the Holy Ghost. It hardly need be said that such
hopes are better thrown away than kept. It were strange, indeed, if one
could lead a Christian life upon the foundation of an experience in which
the Holy Ghost is not recognized as having anything to do.
LETTER II
UNHEALTHY REVIVAL EXCITEMENT
Another error, which has prevailed to a considerable extent in promoting
revivals of religion, I apprehend, is that of encouraging an unhealthy degree
of excitement. Some degree of excitement is inevitable. The truths that
must be seen and duly appreciated to induce the sinner to turn to God,
will of necessity produce a considerable degree of excitement in his mind;
but it should always be understood that excitement, especially where it
exists in a high degree, exposes the sinner to great delusions. Religion
consists in the heart's obedience to the law of the intelligence, as
distinguished from its being influenced by emotion or fear. When the
feelings are greatly excited, the will yields to them almost of necessity, I
do not mean that it does absolutely by necessity, but that an excited state
of feeling has so much power over the will that it almost certainly controls
it. Now the mind is never religious when it is actuated by the feelings, for
this is following impulse. Whatever the feelings are, if the soul gives itself
up to be controlled by feelings rather than by the law and gospel of God, as
truth lies revealed in the intelligence, it is not a religious state of mind.
Now the real difficulty of obeying the law of the intelligence is in
proportion to the amount of excitement. Just in proportion as the feelings
are strongly excited, they tend to govern the will, and in as far as they do
govern the will, there is and can be no religion in the soul, whatever these
feelings are.
Now, just so much excitement is important in revivals as is requisite to
secure the fixed and thorough attention of the mind to the truth, and no
more. When excitement goes beyond this, it is always dangerous. When
excitement is very great, so as really to carry the will, the subjects of this
excitement invariably deceive themselves. They get the idea that they are
religious in proportion as they are governed by their feelings. They are
conscious of feeling deeply, and of acting accordingly, and because they do
feel. They are conscious of being sincerely actuated by their feelings. This
they regard as true religion. Whereas, if they are really governed by their
feelings as distinguished from their intelligence, they are not religious at
all.
This is no doubt the secret of so many false hopes, in those revivals in
which there is very great excitement. Where this has not been understood,
and very great excitement has been rather nourished than controlled; where
it has been taken for granted that the revival of religion is great in
proportion to the amount of excitement, great evils have invariably
resulted to the cause of Christ. The great excitement attending revivals is
an evil often incidental to real revivals of religion. But if the attention of
the people can be thoroughly secured, no more excitement should be
encouraged than is consistent with leaving the intelligence to exercise its
full power on the will, without the obstruction of deeply excited feelings. I
have often seen persons in so much excitement that the intelligence seemed
to be almost stultified, and anything but reason seemed to have the control
of the will. This is not religion, but enthusiasm; and oftentimes, as I shall
have occasion to show in the course of these letters, has taken on, at last,
the type of fanaticism.
Again, it is a dangerous thing in revivals to address too exclusively the
hopes and fears of men; for the plain reason that, selfish as man is,
addressing his hopes and fears almost exclusively, tends to beget in him a
selfish submission to God - a selfish religion to which he is moved, on
the one hand, by fear of punishment, and, on the other, by hope of reward.
Now it is true that God addresses the hopes and the fears of men,
threatens them with punishment if they disobey, and offers them rewards
if they obey; but still there is no virtue while the heart is actuated merely
by hope of reward or fear of punishment. If sinners will disinterestedly
love Him, and consecrate themselves to the good of universal being, He
promises them a reward for this disinterested service. But He nowhere
promises them reward for following Him for the loaves and fishes. This is
sheer selfishness.
If sinners will repent and turn away from their sins, and disinterestedly
consecrate themselves to the good of the universe and the glory of God,
He promises to forgive their sins. But this promise is not made to a selfish
giving up of sin. Outward sin may be given up from selfish motives, but
the sin of the heart never can be; for that consists in selfishness, and it is
nonsense and absurdity to speak of really giving up sin from selfish
motives. Every selfish effort at giving up the heart is only a confirmation
of selfishness. All attempts to give up sin from mere fear of punishment or
hope of reward are not only hypocritical, but tend directly to confirm,
strengthen, and perpetuate the selfishness of the heart.
There can be no doubt that when sinners are careless, addressing their
hopes and fears is the readiest and perhaps the only way of arousing them,
and getting their attention to the subject of salvation; but it should be
forever remembered that when their attention is thus secured, they should,
as far as possible, be kept from taking a selfish view of the subject. Those
considerations should then be pressed on them that tend to draw them
away from themselves, and constrain them to give their whole being up to
God. We should present to their minds the character of God, His
government, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the plan of salvation - any such
thing that is calculated to charm the sinner away from his sins, and from
pursuing his own interests, and that is calculated to excite him to exercise
disinterested and universal love.
On the other hand, his own deformity, selfishness, self-will, pride,
ambition, enmity, lusts, guilt, loathsomeness, hatefulness, spiritual death,
dependence, its nature and its extent - all these things should be brought
to bear in a burning focus on his mind. Right over against his own
selfishness, enmity, self-will, and loathsome depravity, should be set the
disinterestedness, the great love, the infinite compassion, the meekness,
condescension, purity, holiness, truthfulness, and justice of the blessed
God. These should be held before him, like a mirror, until they press on
him with such a mountain weight as to break his heart. It is very easy to
see that this can not be done without producing a considerable degree, and
oftentimes a high degree, of excitement. But it should be forever
remembered that great excitement is only an incidental evil, and by no
means a thing which is to be looked upon as highly favorable to his
conversion. The more calm the soul can be kept while it gazes on those
truths, the more free is the will left to comply with obligation as it lies
revealed in the intelligence.
I have no doubt that much unreasonable opposition has been made to the
excitement that is often witnessed in connection with revivals of religion;
for, as I have said, great excitement is oftentimes unavoidable. But I have
just as little doubt that, oftentimes, excitement has been unnecessarily
great, and that real pains have been taken to promote deep and
overwhelming excitement. I have sometimes witnessed efforts that were
manifestly intended to create as much excitement as possible, and not
infrequently have measures been used which seemed to have no tendency
to instruct or to subdue the will, or to bring sinners to the point of
intelligently closing in with the terms of salvation; but, on the contrary, it
has seemed to me to beget a sort of infatuation through the power of
overwhelming excitement. I can not believe that this is healthful or at all
safe in revivals. Indeed, where such a course has been taken, I believe it
will be found to be a universal truth that evil, instead of good, has resulted
from such efforts. The more I have seen of revivals, the more I am
impressed with the importance of keeping excitement down as far as is
consistent with a full exhibition of truth.
Oftentimes, excitement spreads rapidly through a congregation under the
influence of sympathy, and it not infrequently becomes necessary, in
powerful revivals, to proceed with great discretion for this reason. Where
one individual becomes overwhelmed with excitement, and breaks out into
loud crying and tears, which he can not contain himself, but has to wail out
with excitement, it requires much judgment to dispose of such a case
without injury on the one side or the other. If the thing be severely
rebuked, it will almost invariably beget such a feeling among Christians as
to quench the Spirit. On the other hand, if it be openly encouraged and the
flame fanned, it will often produce an overwhelming amount of excitement
throughout the congregation. Many will, perhaps, be entirely overcome,
and multitudes will profess to submit to God; whereas scarcely one of
them has acted intelligently, or will, in the end, be found to have been
truly converted.
It is sometimes said, No matter how great the excitement is, if it is only
produced by truth.
Now it often comes to pass that, up to a certain point, excitement will be
produced by truth, at which point the intellect becomes bewildered, the
sensibility becomes inflamed and overwhelmed, and there is a perfect
explosion of feeling, while the intellect is almost smothered and wrecked
by the tornado of excitement. Now this is a state very unfavorable to true
conversion. I have seen such cases repeatedly, and before I had experience
on that subject, I thought well and even highly of cases of this kind. But I
have learned to view them in a different light, and to feel much more
confidence in apparent conversions that occur where there is greater
calmness of mind. I wish to be understood. Excitement can not reasonably
be objected to as a thing entirely unnecessary in revivals; but the thing I
would be distinctly understood to say is, that no effort should be made to
produce excitement beyond what a lucid and powerful exposition of truth
will produce. All the measures used to awaken interest, and our whole
policy in regulating this awakened interest, should be such as will not
disturb the operations of the intelligence, or divert its attention from the
truth to which the heart is bound to submit.
I remark again, that many excitements which are taken for revivals of
religion, after all, result in very little substantial piety, simply because
the excitement is too great. Appeals are made too much to the feelings. Hope
and fear are exclusively addressed. A strain of preaching is adopted which
appeals rather to the sympathies and the feelings than to the intelligence.
A tornado of excitement results, but no intelligent action of the heart. The
will is swept along by a tempest of feeling. The intelligence is rather, for
the time, being stultified and confounded than possessed with clear views
of truth. Now this certainly can never result in good.
Again, especially has this mistake been common, if I am not mistaken, in
endeavors to promote revivals among children. The whole tendency of
things with them is to excitement, and not the least dependence can be
placed on revivals among them without the greatest pains to instruct rather
than to excite them. They may be thrown into a perfect tempest of
excitement, and multitudes of them profess to be, and perhaps appear to
be, converted, when they are influenced solely by their feelings, and have
no thorough discriminating and correct views of truth at all. I know the
result of all such efforts and such excitements among children is to make
them skeptics; and, indeed, this is the result among all classes of persons
who are brought to be the subjects of great excitement about religion, and
have not sufficient solid and discriminating instruction to turn their hearts
to God.
LETTER III
A CAUSE OF SPURIOUS CONVERSIONS
I have already intimated that pains enough had not been taken to
search the heart and thoroughly detect and expose the sinner's depravity,
so as to make him see the need of the gospel remedy. If I am not mistaken,
there has been, in many cases, an error committed in urging sinners to
submission before they are prepared to understand what true submission
is. They have been urged to repent, before they have really understood the
nature and desert of sin; to believe, before they have understood their need
of Christ; to resolve to serve God, before they have at all understood what
the service of God is. They have been pressed to make up their minds to
enter immediately upon the service of God, and have been taught that they
needed only to make a resolution to obey the Lord. Hence their religion,
after all, has been only a religion of resolutions, instead of a religion of
faith, and love, and of a broken heart. In short, it appears to me that, in
many instances, the true idea of what constitutes pure religion has not
been developed in the mind, and that consequently spurious conversions
have been distressingly numerous. I have been more and more surprised
from year to year, to find how very numerous those professors of religion
are who manifestly have not the true ideal of pure religion before their
minds. It seems that, in many instances, the idea that love is the essence
and the whole of religion, is left almost, if not entirely, out of view.
There seem to be two extremes toward which different classes of persons
have been continually verging. These extremes are Antinomianism on the
one hand, and legality on the other - both manifestly at an equal remove
from the true idea of religion.
The religion of the legalist is one of resolutions. He resolves to serve the
Lord. He makes up his mind, as he says. He gets the idea that to serve the
Lord is to go to work; to pray in his family; to attend meetings; to visit, to
talk, and bustle about, and do the work of the Lord, as he calls it, and this
with a perfectly legal spirit, with none of that love, gentleness, meekness,
long-suffering, and those fruits of the Spirit, which characterize true
Christianity. He easily works himself into an excitement; but, after all, has
not the root of the matter in him, and makes out to keep up what he calls
his working for God only during a protracted meeting. Probably three
months of the year is the utmost extent of his piety; in many instances,
probably, it does not amount to even half that. Now the difficulty in this
case is, that the individual has not the root of the matter in him. The
fountain of the great deep of selfishness has not been broken up. He has
never been thoroughly convicted of sin by the Holy Ghost. His
convictions of sin have been little more than those natural and necessary
affirmations of his own mind, under a clear exhibition of truth by the
preacher, without any supernatural illumination by the Spirit of God.
Consequently all his ideas of God, of sin, of his own guilt and desert of
punishment, his need of a Savior, the necessity of his being saved from his
sins - in short, every fundamental idea of the Christian religion is
apprehended by him with very little clearness. His mind is dark; his heart
is hard.
He has never been stripped of his self-dependence and self-righteousness;
consequently, he has never known Christ, "the power of His resurrection,
the fellowship of His sufferings," nor the "being made conformable to His
death"; nor has he even an idea of what these things mean. He knows little
of Christ more than the name, and an obscure idea of His mediatorial work
and relations. He has never been slain by the law, and found himself a
dead, condemned, and lost sinner; and, consequently, dead to all tendency
toward God. He has no deep consciousness of sustaining the relation of an
outlaw and a condemned criminal to the government of God, and being
dead to all hope in himself or in any other creature. In short, instead of
seeing his necessities, his true character and relations, his views of all
these things are so exceedingly superficial, that he has not apprehended,
and does not apprehend, the necessity and nature of gospel salvation. He
goes about, working for God, just as he would serve a man for wages, and
in the same sense. His religion is not that of disinterested and universal
benevolence; but he makes up his mind to serve God, just as he would
make up his mind in any matter of barter, or to render a piece of service to
any body else, for value received or to be received.
This class of converts may generally be distinguished by the following,
among other characteristics:
1. There is a manifest want of meekness, humility, and lowliness of mind
in their religion. The fact is, they never have been humbled and broken
down, and consequently they do not exhibit this state of mind. Their
deportment, conversation, bearing, their prayers and exhortations, all savor
of a self-righteous spirit.
2. There is a manifest want of love in their religion, in other words, their
religion is not love. The manner in which they speak of old professors of
religion, of Christians and ministers, and indeed of all classes,
demonstrates that the law of kindness and love is not in their hearts, and
consequently is not on their tongues. They are not tender of the reputation
of others, regardful of their feelings, alive to their interests, gentle, kind,
and courteous, as those that are actuated by love. Observe them and you
will see that their religion wants the attributes laid down by Paul in I
Corinthians 13. It has not that charity which suffereth long and is kind,
which envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave
itself unseemly, which thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but
rejoiceth in the truth. This religion, which beareth, believeth, hopeth,
endureth all, is not theirs.
3. Another obvious characteristic in this class of converts is, that there is
very little of Christ in their religion. They will manifest in their
conversion, prayers, and in many ways, that they have not been emptied
of themselves and filled with Christ.
4. Another characteristic will be, they are not Bible students. They do not,
after all, relish and deeply search the Bible. The fact is, they understand it
but very slightly. They have not been so subdued that the language of the
inspired writers is the natural language of their own experience. This is the
secret of their not understanding, loving, and searching it. No person really
understands and loves his Bible, until he has such an experience as accords
with the language of the Bible; and no further than his experience accords
with the inspired writers, does the Bible become intelligible and deeply
interesting to him. Now I have observed that there are a great many
professors who neither know nor care much about their Bibles. There are
even some young preachers, or professed preachers, who know almost
nothing about their Bibles. and who, in fact, read other things ten times as
much as they read the Book of God. A vast number of professed converts
know full well, and those who are well acquainted with them must also
know, that they are but little interested in their Bibles. Now all this shows
conclusively that their religion is not Bible religion; that they are not "on
the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being
the Chief Cornerstone."
"And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these
is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13) (R. V.).
LETTER IV
ERRORS THAT HINDER REVIVALS
Another error in the promotion of revivals is, a want of such
discrimination in the instructions given as thoroughly to develop the true
idea of religion in the mind. I have been astonished and greatly pained to
find how few professors of religion seem ever to have had the true idea of
the Christian religion distinctly in their minds. Great multitudes suppose it
to consist merely in certain feelings and emotions, and mere passive states
of mind. Consequently, when they speak of their religion, they speak of
their feelings, "I feel thus and so." They seem to suppose that religion
consists almost, if not altogether, in certain states of the sensibility, in
which, strictly speaking, there can be no religion at all.
Multitudes make their religion consist in desires, as distinct from choice
and action of the will, in which, certainly, there can be no religion, if we
use the term desire, as I now do, in the sense of a passive as opposed to a
voluntary state of mind. Others have supposed religion to consist in a
merely legal state in which the mind is lashed up by the conscience to a
reluctant performance of what it calls duty. Indeed, there is almost every
form of error in respect to what really constitutes true religion. Men seem
to have no just idea of the nature of sin or of holiness.
Selfishness is often spoken of by many professors of religion as if it were
hardly to be considered sinful, and, if sinful at all, only one form of sin.
When I have had occasion to preach in different places on the subject of
selfishness, I have been surprised to find that great numbers of professors
of religion have been struck with the idea, as if it were new, that
selfishness is entirely inconsistent with a religious state of mind. They
seem never to have dreamed that all selfishness is inconsistent with
religion.
In preaching in one of our cities, I was endeavoring to develop the true idea
of the Christian religion, and demonstrate that it consisted alone in love, or
in disinterested, perfect, and universal benevolence. The idea that religion
consisted in benevolence seemed to be entirely new to great multitudes of
professors of religion. And on one occasion, when this subject had been
presented, and turned over and over until the congregation understood it, a
deacon of one of the Churches remarked to me, as I came out of the pulpit,
that he did not believe there were ten real Christians in the city; and a lady
said she did not know of but one person in the Church to which she
belonged who had the religion of benevolence - all the rest, so far as she
knew them, appeared to be under the dominion of selfishness. If I am not
mistaken, there certainly is a great want of just and thorough
discrimination on this subject in most of the congregations in this land, and
especially is this manifest in seasons of revival. This is the very time to
bring out and press these discriminations until the true idea of religion
stands out in full development. Unless this is done, almost endless
mistakes will be fallen into by professed converts.
In a future letter, I may point out some of these mistakes in detail; but
here, suffice it to say that it must be of essential importance that persons
should understand what religion is, and that it is all summed up in one
word, love; and that every form of true religion is only a modification of
love, or disinterested benevolence, that whatever does not proceed from
love is not virtue or true religion. The inquirers should be instructed that to
be converted is to love God with all their hearts - to repent is to turn
away from selfishness, and give their hearts to God - in short, that the
first and only thing which they are required to do is to love the Lord with
all their hearts and their neighbor as themselves, and that until they do
love, whatever else they do, they are not religious, and no further than
they are actuated by supreme love to God and equal love to man are they
truly religious in any case whatever. Too much pains can not be taken to
correct the errors into which men are constantly falling on this subject. But
while it is of vital importance to make these distinctions, let it be forever
remembered that these discriminations themselves will never convert men
to true religion.
And there is another error into which, if I mistake not, some have fallen.
They have spent their whole strength in making these distinctions, and
showing the philosophical nature of faith, of benevolence, of repentance,
and of the different Christian graces. They have perhaps made just
discriminations, and urged them nobly and efficiently, until they have
really developed correct ideas in the mind; but they have fallen short, after
all, of promoting true religion, on account of one fundamental defect. For
instance, when they have made just discriminations, and developed the
true idea of faith, they have stopped short, and suffered the mind to please
itself with the idea, while the heart does not go forth to the realization of
the idea. In other words, they have failed to present the objects of faith,
and to hold them before the mind until the mind believes. They
philosophized, perhaps correctly, about the nature of faith; but they have
not so forcibly arrayed before the mind the truths to be believed as to
beget faith. They have made men understand what faith is, but have not
succeeded in persuading them to exercise faith. They have been satisfied
with developing the idea, without pressing the truth to be believed, and
holding the objects of faith before the mind, until the will yields and
commits itself to them in the exercise of faith. The same has been true of
every other Christian grace. They have developed the true idea of
benevolence, but have not pressed those considerations that tend to make
the mind benevolent, until it has broken loose from its selfishness and
wholly committed itself to the exercise of benevolence. It is certainly all
important distinction which I have before my mind.
A man may understand the philosophical nature of benevolence without
being benevolent. If we satisfy ourselves with developing the true idea of
benevolence, and do not so present God, Christ, the love of Christ, the
great interests of the universe, and all the moving considerations which
tend to make the mind benevolent, although we may develop the true idea
of religion, we may fail of securing true religion. Some, as I have said, have
greatly erred in not making just discriminations in respect to the nature of
true religion, and converts have taken up with something else, Supposing it
to be the religion of Christ. Others have made just discriminations until
they have developed the idea, and converts have mistaken the idea of true
religion, as it lies developed in the intelligence, for religion itself. Seeing
what it is so clearly, they think they have it. They understand it and do
not realize that they do not exercise it. Now both these things need to be
thoroughly attended to, in order to secure sound conversions. Especially is
this true since a false philosophy has engendered false ideas of religion in
so many minds.
What is true of faith and love, is true of repentance, humility, meekness,
and every grace. Not only should its philosophical nature be defined, until
the true idea is developed in the intelligence, but those truths that tend to
produce it should be pressed, and turned over and explained, and held up
before the mind, until the heart goes forth in the exercise of these virtues.
Let it be understood that the philosophical explanations which develop the
idea of these virtues have no tendency to beget them. It is only a lucid and
forcible exhibition of appropriate truths, such as makes its appeal to the
heart, that can ever be instrumental in begetting true religion. And here I
would say that if either class of truths is to be omitted, the discriminations
of which I have spoken can be omitted with the greatest safety; for if we
hold forth the objects of faith and love, and strongly present and press
these truths, they tend to beget repentance, faith, love, humility,
meekness, etc. We may expect in multitudes of instances to beget these
forms of virtue in their purity without the subject of them having an idea
of their philosophical nature.
By presenting Christ, for instance, a soul may be led to believe in Him,
without once thinking of the philosophical nature of true faith. By holding
forth the character of God, true love may be begotten in the mind without
the philosophical nature of love being at all understood by the mind, and
this may be true of every grace, so that it is far better to hold forth those
truths that tend to beget these graces, and omit the discriminations that
would develop their philosophical ideal, than to make discriminations, and
leave out of view, or slightly exhibit, the truths that are indispensable to
engage the obedience of the heart. The discriminations, of which I have
spoken, that develop the true idea, are mostly important to cut up the
false hopes of old professors and spurious converts, and to prevent
inquirers from falling into error. And I would beseech my brethren, who
are engaged in promoting revivals of religion, to remember and carry into
practice this important consideration, that the gospel is to be set forth in
all its burning and overcoming power, as the thing to be believed, until the
Christian graces are brought into exercise, and that occasionally, in the
course of revival preaching, the preacher should bring forth these
fundamental discriminations. They should develop the true idea of religion
and prevent false hopes.
LETTER V
ERRONEOUS REVIVAL PREACHING
Another error which has prevailed to some extent, I fear, in the
promotion of revivals, has been a kind of preaching that has rather puffed
up than humbled and subdued the mind. I mean a kind of preaching which
dwells much more on the philosophy of religion than the great facts of
revelation. Into this mistake, I am sure that I have often fallen myself.
Where the preaching is so metaphysical and philosophical, as to leave the
impression that everything about religion can be comprehended, and that
nothing can be received which can not be explained, and its philosophy
understood, great mischief is a certain result. I do not suppose that any
have fallen into the error of declaring that nothing is to be received by faith
that can not be philosophically explained and understood, yet, if I am not
mistaken, this impression has been left after all. The human mind is so
desperately wicked, so self-complacent on the one hand, and so
unbelieving on the other, that it is greatly flattered and puffed up when it
indulges in metaphysical and philosophical speculations about the truths
of religion, until it fancies itself able to comprehend most or all of the
great truths that relate to God and His kingdom.
Now, two evils result directly from this course of instruction. It
substitutes our own ratiocinations for faith. When men philosophize or
speculate about a doctrine until they see it to be philosophical, they are
exceedingly apt to rest in their own demonstrations or philosophical
conclusions rather than in the testimony of God. But this is not faith.
When men have formed this habit, they will either wholly reject all
doctrines which they can not philosophically comprehend and explain, or
they will hold them so loosely that it can be easily seen they have no real
confidence in them. Such men, so far as you can commend yourself to their
intelligence, by explaining everything to their comprehension, will go along
with you; but they manifestly go along under the influence of your
speculations and reasonings, and not at all because they implicitly confide
in the testimony of God in regard to the facts of the gospel.
Now it will be found that this class of Christians either absolutely reject,
or hold very loosely, some of the most important and precious doctrines
of the gospel, such as the Divinity and humanity of Christ, the doctrine of
the Trinity, the Divine purposes, and many other truths connected with
these. This kind of preaching serves, not to humble the pride of the human
mind, but conveys the very kind of knowledge which Paul says puffs up. I
have often thought of that passage in witnessing the spirit of the class of
converts to which I allude. They are manifestly wise in their own conceits.
They understand what they believe. They pride themselves on being
philosophers, and in not ignorantly and weakly believing what they can
not understand. Now I have observed it to be perfectly manifest, that this
class of persons have no real faith. Their confidence is not at all in God,
and the Bible, or in any of its statements, simply because God has
declared them. They are pleased with and confide in their own
speculations, and of course have but very little reverence for God, very
little reverence for His authority, and no true confidence in His Word.
The evils of this kind of philosophical preaching are, first, it does not
beget faith; secondly, if faith once existed, it has no tendency to develop,
strengthen, and confirm it, but rather to wither and destroy it. It is a
remarkable fact that the inspired writers never philosophize, but always
assume a correct philosophy. They throw out facts on which faith may
lay hold. Although they never philosophize, yet it will be seen that their
method of presenting truth is truly philosophical, when we consider the
end which they had in view. It is very plain that the Scriptural method of
presenting truth is the very one which, Of all others, is calculated to secure
the end which God has in view. Faith in the character and testimony of
God is forever indispensable to heart-obedience to God in all worlds. Some
talk about faith being swallowed up in vision in heaven: but this can never
be. Confidence in God and His character, wisdom, goodness, and in the
universality and perfection of His benevolence, will no doubt be just as
indispensable in heaven, to all eternity, as it is on earth.
From the nature of the case, it must be that very many of the Divine
dispensations in a government so vast, managed with a policy to us so
inscrutable, must be deeply mysterious and perplexing to us, unless we
have the most implicit confidence in God's benevolence and wisdom.
Now, in this world, the great object of God is to restore confidence in
Himself and His government; to beget and develop faith to the utmost.
Consequently, He presents facts without explaining them. He enters not at
all into their philosophy, but simply asserts the facts which He desires to
communicate, and leaves it for faith to lay hold upon and rest in them.
Now, many of these facts we can never comprehend. We may understand
that a thing is true while we can not explain its philosophy. This is no
doubt true of myriads of facts which will be ever coming up in the
administration of God's government. It is therefore indispensable that we
should be trained, in the beginning of our Christian course, to rest
unhesitatingly in the facts, and wait for the explanations until we are able
to receive them. Too much stress, therefore, can not be laid on so
presenting the gospel as to give full scope for the exercise of faith. By this,
I do not mean that the facts are not to be explained, if they admit of
philosophical explanation, but I mean that too much pains should not be
taken to explain and philosophize on facts.
In my own experience, I have found that I have greatly injured my own
piety by insisting too much on understanding everything before I would
receive it - that is, I have not been satisfied oftentimes with merely
understanding that such things were asserted as facts, but was restless,
unsatisfied, and unstable, unless I could comprehend and explain the
philosophy of the facts. Surely this has formerly been my experience on
the subject of the atonement. I found myself not satisfied with the bare
announcement that Christ had died as my substitute, but I must
understand the how and the why, and the great principles of Divine
government, and the policy of Jehovah's empire, on which this great
transaction turned. I can indeed explain to my own satisfaction the
philosophy of this transaction, and have often succeeded in explaining it to
the most skeptical minds; but after all, from subsequent reflection, I have
been persuaded that had the bare facts been pressed on them, and had they
received it first as a fact on the authority of Divine testimony, it would
have been more healthful for their souls.
Within the last year or two, I have been led more to consider the
importance of holding forth facts as such until they are believed as facts,
and then, from time to time, explaining their philosophy. I find this
exceedingly healthful to my own soul, and to the souls of others, who first
believed the facts without hearing the philosophy of them explained. This
develops and strengthens faith. It leads them to feel that God is to be
trusted, and that whatever He says is to be received barely on the
authority of His own testimony. When, afterwards, the philosophy of it is
opened to their view, they do not believe the fact any more firmly than
before; but they are greatly edified, and even charmed with the
philosophical illustrations of those things which before they have believed
as facts on the authority of God. This I find to be exceedingly healthful to
my own mind, and so far as I have had experience, to the minds of others.
Indeed, it is easy to see that. the gospel should be presented and received
in this way. This is the manner in which the Bible everywhere presents it.
First, receive the facts as facts, simply because God affirms them;
afterwards, explain such as can be explained and comprehended, for the
edification and growth in knowledge of God's dear children. But reverse
the process - first, explain everything, and there is really no room left for
faith; and if there is, you will find that professed converts really have no
faith, and will either wholly reject or hold very loosely and doubtfully
every declared fact or doctrine of the Bible which does not admit of clear
philosophical analysis and explanation. This, I am sure, is the result of too
much philosophizing and metaphysical speculation in preaching.
But let me say again that this kind of preaching is very pleasing to certain
classes of hearers, although the truly and highly spiritual will soon find
themselves growing lean on it. Yet a congregation generally will be puffed
up, pleased, and from sermon to sermon think themselves greatly edified
and benefited; whereas it will generally be seen that they do not grow more
prevalent in prayer, more humble, more consecrated to God; do not attain
more of the meekness of a child and more of the patience of Jesus Christ.
Their growth is not truly Christian growth. It is rather a philosophical
growth, and oftentimes pride and egotism are the most prominent
characteristics of a congregation who are fed with philosophy, and
metaphysics instead of the humbling facts of the gospel. I surely have
been guilty enough in this respect, and I am certainly not alone in this
condemnation, although others, who have taken the same course
substantially that I have in this respect may not have seen their error so
fully as I have been forced to see it. I wish not to be misunderstood. I
would be far from advocating a mere presentation of facts without any
explanation at all. I would take a middle course, so as, on the one hand, not
to puff up by a disproportionate development of the intelligence, while
almost no room is left for the exercise of faith in Divine testimony; nor, on
the other hand, to stultify the intelligence by simply holding forth facts for
the exercise of faith.
LETTER VI
EXCITEMENT IN REVIVALS
I have by no means done with the subject of excitement as connected
with revivals of religion. In every age of the Church, cases have occurred in
which persons have had such clear manifestations of Divine truth as to
prostrate their physical strength entirely. This appears to have been the
case with Daniel. He fainted and was unable to stand. Saul of Tarsus
seems to have been overwhelmed and prostrated under the blaze of Divine
glory that surrounded him. I have met with many cases where the physical
powers were entirely prostrated by a clear apprehension of the infinitely
great and weighty truths of religion.
With respect to these cases I remark:
1 That they are not cases of that objectionable excitement of which I
spoke in my former letter. For in these cases, the intelligence does not
appear to be stultified and confused, but to be full of light. The mind
seems not to be conscious of any unusual excitement of its own
sensibility; but, on the contrary, seems to itself to be calm, and its state
seems peculiar only because truth is seen with unusual clearness.
Manifestly there is no such effervescence of the sensibility as produces
tears, or any of the usual manifestations of an excited imagination, or
deeply moved feelings. There is not that gush of feeling which distracts the
thoughts; but the mind sees truth, unveiled, and in such relations as really
to take away all bodily strength, while the mind looks in upon the unveiled
glories of the Godhead. The veil seems to be removed from the mind, and
truth is seen much as we must suppose it to be when the spirit is
disembodied. No wonder this should overpower the body.
Now such cases have often stumbled those who have witnessed them; and
yet, so far as I have had opportunity to inquire into their subsequent
history, I have been persuaded that, in general, these were sound eases of
conversion. A few may possibly be counterfeits; but I do not recollect any
clearly marked case of this kind in which it was not afterwards manifest
that the love of God had been deeply shed abroad in the heart, the will
greatly subdued, and the whole character greatly and most desirably
modified.
Now, I again remark that I do not feel at liberty to object to these cases of
excitement, if they may be so called. Whatever excitement attends them
seems to result necessarily from the clear manifestations which God makes
to the soul. This excitement, instead of being boisterous, unintelligent, and
enthusiastic, like that alluded to in my former letter, seems to be similar to
that which we may suppose exists among the departed spirits of the just.
Indeed, this seems to me a just principle: We need fear no kind or degree of
excitement which is produced simply by perceived truth, and is consistent
with the healthful operation of the intellectual powers. Whatever exceeds
this, must be disastrous.
In general, those cases of bodily prostration of which I have spoken occur
without the apparent intervention of any external means adapted to
produce such a result. So far as I have observed, they occur when the soul
is shut up to God. In the case of Daniel, of Saul, of William Tennant, and
others, there were no human instrumentalities, or measures, or exciting
appeals to the imagination or sensibility; but a simple revelation of God to
the soul by the Holy Ghost.
Now the excitement produced in this manner seems to be of a very
different kind from that produced by very boisterous, vociferous
preaching, exhortation or prayer; or by those very exciting appeals to fear
which are often made by zealous exhorters or preachers. Exciting measures
are often used, and very exciting illustrations are employed, which agitate
and strain the nervous system until the sensibility seems to gush forth like
a flood of water, and for the time completely overwhelm and drown the
intelligence.
But the excitement produced when the Holy Ghost reveals God to the
soul is totally different from this. It is not only consistent with the
clearest and most enlarged perceptions of the intelligence, but directly
promotes and produces such perceptions. Indeed, it promotes the free and
unembarrassed action of both the intelligence and the will.
This is the kind of excitement that we need. It is that which the Holy
Spirit always produces. It is not an excitement of sympathy; not a spasm,
or explosion of the nervous sensibility; but is a calm, deep, sacred flow of
the soul in view of the clear, infinitely important, and impressive truths of
God.
It requires, often, no little discrimination to distinguish between an
effervescence of the sensibility produced by loud and exciting appeals -
by corresponding measures, on the one hand; and, on the other, that calm,
but deep, and sometimes over-powering flow of soul which is produced
by the Spirit of God, revealing Jesus to the soul. I have sometimes feared
that these different kinds of excitement are confounded with each other,
and consequently, by one class of persons, all alike rejected and
denounced; and by another class, wholly defended. Now it appears to me
of great importance to distinguish in these cases between things that differ.
When I see cases of extraordinary excitement, I have learned to inquire, as
calmly and affectionately as I can, into the views of truth taken by the
mind at the time. If the individual readily and spontaneously gives such
reasons as naturally account for this excitement, I can then judge of its
character. If it really originates in clear views presented by the Holy
Ghost, of the character of God and of the great truths of His government,
The mind will be full of these truths, and will spontaneously give them off
whenever there is ability to utter them. It will be seen that there is a
remarkably clear view of truth, and, where power of speech is left, a
remarkable facility in communicating it. As a general thing, I do not fear
the excitement in these cases.
But where the attention seems to be occupied with one's own feelings, and
when they can give no intelligible reason for feeling as they do. very little
confidence can be placed in their state. I have frequently seen cases when
the excitement was very great, and almost overwhelming; yet the subject
of it, upon the closest inquiry, could give no intelligent account of any
perceptions of truth which the mind had. The soul seemed to be moved to
its deepest foundations; but not by clear exhibitions of truth, or by
manifestations of God to the soul. Hence the mind did not seem to be
acting intelligently. I have learned to be afraid of this, and to place
little or no confidence in professed conversions under such circumstances.
I have observed that the subjects of these excitements will, after a season,
look upon themselves as having been infatuated and swept away by a tornado
of unintelligent excitement.
ILLUSTRATION - A FACT
As an illustration of what I would say upon this subject, I will relate a fact
that once occurred under my own observation. I attended a camp meeting
in the State of New York which had been in progress two or three days
before my arrival. I heard the preachers and attended the exercises through
most of that day, and there appeared to be very little - indeed no visible
- excitement. After several sermons had been preached, and after much
exhortation, prayer, and singing, I observed several of the leading men to
be whispering to each other for some time, as if in profound deliberation;
after which, one of them, a man of athletic frame and stentorian voice,
came down from the stand, and pressed his way along into the midst of a
company of women who were sitting in front of the stand, and then began
to clap his hands, and halloo at the top of his voice: "Power! Power!
Power!" Soon another, and another, set in. till there was a general shouting
and clapping of hands, followed presently by the shrieking of women, and
resulting, after a little time, in the falling of several of them from their
seats. Then it was proclaimed that the power of God was revealed from
Heaven. After pushing this excitement to a most extraordinary extent, the
minister who began it, and those who united with him and had thus
succeeded, as they supposed, in bringing down the power of God upon
the congregation, retired from the scene of confusion, manifestly much
gratified at the result.
This scene, and some others of a similar character, have often occurred to
my mind. I can not but regard such movements as calculated to promote
anything else than true religion. In the getting up of this excitement there
was not a word Of truth communicated; there was no prayer or
exhortation, - nothing but a most vociferous shouting of "Power! Power!
Power!" accompanied by an almost deafening clapping of hands. I believe
this to have been an extraordinary case, and that probably but few cases
occur which are so highly objectionable. But things often occur in revivals
which seem to beget an excitement but little more intelligent than this.
Such appeals are made to the imagination and to certain departments of the
sensibility as completely to throw the action of the intellect into the
shade. So far as such efforts to promote revivals are made, they are
undoubtedly highly disastrous, and should be entirely discouraged.
LETTER VII
FANATICAL EXCITEMENT
While upon the subject of excitement, I wish to make a few suggestions
on the danger that highly-excited feelings will take a wrong direction, and
result in fanaticism. Every one is aware that, when the feelings are strongly
excited, they are capable of being turned in various directions, and of
assuming various types, according to the circumstances of the excited
individual. Few persons who have witnessed revivals of religion have not
had occasion to remark this tendency of the human mind, and the efforts
of Satan to use it for his own advantage, by mingling in the spirit of
fanaticism with the spirit of a religious revival.
Fanaticism results from what a certain writer calls "loveless light."
Whenever the mind is enlightened in regard to what men ought to be and
do and say, and is not at the same time in the exercise of benevolence, a
spirit of fanaticism, indignation, rebuke, and denunciation is the almost
inevitable result.
By fanaticism, I mean a state of mind in which the malign emotions take
the control of the will, and hurry the individual away into an outrageous
and vindictive effort to sustain what he calls right and truth. He contends
for what he regards as truth or right with a malign spirit.
Now, in seasons of religious revival, there is special danger that fanaticism
will spring up under the influence of infernal agency. It is, in many
respects, a peculiarly favorable time for Satan to sow, in a rank soil, the
seed of some of the most turbulent and outrageous forms of error that have
ever cursed the world.
Among the crowd who attend preaching at such times, there are almost
always persons who have a strong fanatical tendency of mind. They are
strongly inclined to censoriousness, fault-finding, vituperation,
denunciation, and rebuke. It is a strong and ultra-democratic tendency of
mind, anti-conservative in the extreme, and strongly tending to misrule.
Now, in proportion as persons of this character become enlightened
respecting the duties and the sins of men, they are very likely to break
forth into a spirit of turbulent fanaticism.
It is well known that almost all the reforms of this and of every age have
been cursed by this sort of fanaticism. Temperance, moral reform,
physiological and dietetic reform, anti-slavery, - all have felt the blight;
almost nothing has escaped. When lecturers or others take up these
questions and discuss them, pouring light upon the public mind, it often
seems to disturb a cockatrice' den. The deep and perhaps hitherto hidden
tendencies to fanaticism are blown up into flame, and often burst forth as
from the molten heart of a volcano. Their indignation is aroused; their
censorious and vituperative tongues are let loose; those unruly remembers
that set on fire the course of nature, and are set on fire of hell, seem to
pour forth a stream of burning lava to scorch and desolate society. Their
prayers, their exhortations, everything they say or do, are but a stream of
scolding, fault-finding, and recrimination. They insist upon it, "They do
well to be angry," - that to manifest anything less than the utmost
indignation were profane, and suited neither to the subject nor the
occasion.
Now it is remarkable to what an extent this class of minds have been
brought forward by the different reforms of the day, and even by revivals
of religion. No matter what the subject is - if it be the promotion of
peace, they will contend for peace with the spirit of outrageous war. With
their tongues, they will make war upon everything that opposes them;
pour forth unmeasured abuse upon all who disagree with them, and make
no compromise nor hold any communion with those who can not at once
subscribe to their peculiar views. If the subject be anti-slavery, they
contend for it with the spirit of slave holders; and while they insist that all
men are free, they will allow freedom of opinion to none but themselves.
They would enslave the views and sentiments of all who differ from them,
and soon castigate them into an acquiescence with their own opinions.
In revivals of religion this spirit generally manifests itself in a kind of
scolding and denunciatory way of praying for all classes of people. Next,
in exhortation, preaching, or in conversation. It especially attacks ministers
and the leading influences of the Church. and moves right on progressively
until it finally regards the whole visible Church as Babylon, and all men as
on the high-road to hell who do not come out and denounce her.
Now this spirit often springs up in revivals so stealthily and insidiously,
that its true character is not at first detected. Perhaps the Church is cold,
the minister and leading influences are out of the way, and it seems no
more than just, nay, even necessary, that some severity should be used
towards those who are so far out of the way. The individual himself feels
this so strongly that he does not suspect himself of fanaticism, though he
deals out a large measure of rebuke in which a sprinkling of the malign
element is unconsciously mingled. He pleads the example of Christ, of
apostles and prophets, and can quote many passages from the Bible very
similar to those which he now uses, and deems himself justified in using,
inasmuch as they are drawn from Scripture. He assumes their application
as he applies them, and also that himself stands in God's stead, and is the
mouth of God in rebuking iniquity.
Now when this spirit first appears, it grates across the tender minds of
those who are in a spirit of love. At first it distresses and agonizes them,
but by and by there seems to be so much truth in what is said; their
prayers and exhortations are so exciting; their own attention being directed
to the faults that are so sternly rebuked, they begin to drink in the same
spirit, and partake of that boisterous and fiery zeal which was at first so
inconsistent with the sweetness of their spirit. They begin to see, as they
suppose, how the denunciations of the prophets, of Christ and of His
apostles, apply to those among whom they live. Their attention is wholly
engrossed with the faults of the Church and the ministry, and they can see
nothing good. They begin to doubt and query whether the visible Church
are not all hypocrites. At first they fear, but soon believe, that nearly all
the ministers are self-deceived, hirelings, conservatives, ambitious,
stewards of the devil. Church organizations are looked upon, first, with
suspicion; then with contempt and abhorrence. "Coming out of Babylon"
becomes the order of the day.
Fanaticism takes on a very great variety of types. Its modifications are
almost innumerable. From the spirit of the Crusades, when men went forth
with boots and spurs, with fire and sword, to convert their fellow men to
Christianity, down to the obscure professor of religion who mutters in a
corner his scolding and fault-finding with everybody and everything, all
the intervening space is filled with the multiform phases of fanaticism.
From the fiery zeal with which the itinerant declaims, vociferates, and
denounces both Church and State, down to the individual who rather looks
than speaks out his fanaticism, you may find this class of persons,
kindling up and nursing the fires of fanaticism in almost every corner of
Christendom.
Now this is doubtless the spirit of Satan, which he has manifested in the
Church and in the world through all past ages.
We have one able book on the subject of fanaticism; but we need another,
which shall take up and expose its more modern developments - which
shall delineate, as on a page of light, the workings of this dark spirit,
whose malign influence, silently working like leaven, would then leaven the
whole lump, and make this earth malign like hell.
I beg leave to call the attention of the brethren to the danger of revival
preachers themselves introducing the spirit of fanaticism. When they meet
with great opposition from the Church, or the world, or the ministry, they
sometimes indulge in a strain of remark that is strongly tinctured with
bitterness. or, at least, with the appearance of bitterness and denunciation.
There are sometimes streaks and dashes of this in the preaching and spirit
of good men. Satan seems to take advantage of their circumstances to
infuse, imperceptibly to themselves, into their spirit and strain of
preaching, praying, and talking, a dash of bitterness and vituperation. This
strongly tends to beget a fanatical state of mind in their admirers.
Revival preachers have sometimes been greatly opposed by ministers until
they have become sore and somewhat irritable; and in this state of mind,
have sometimes gone so far as to preach and speak of those ministers in a
very censorious spirit. This inevitably does great mischief in the revivals
in which they are engaged. It catches like fire among the converts, and
among those professors who are most immediately under his influence,
and tends strongly to run the revival, out of the spirit of love, into a spirit
of recrimination and bitterness. A sore and bitter state of mind will be
manifested by those who think themselves engaged in the work of the
Lord, while the spirit of meekness, gentleness, brotherly kindness, and of
deep and compassionate sympathy with Christ and with His Church will
be almost entirely supplanted.
If I am not mistaken, revival preachers have often greatly erred in this
matter. Whitefleld sometimes did so, as he himself confesses, and the
result was such as I have named, as every one knows who has read the
history of the revivals that occurred under his labors. There is not one
among the revival preachers of modern times who has not erred to a greater
or less extent in this respect. I am sure that I have sometimes done so; and
I do not know of a revival preacher of whom I do not think that, to some
extent, the remarks just made are applicable. A little spice of this spirit in
a revival preacher will work like leaven until it leavens the whole lump,
and if indulged in, will sooner or later totally change the character of the
excitement in which he labors, until it will become a revival of arrant
fanaticism instead of pure religion. This result may occur without his once
suspecting that such is the tendency of his spirit, preaching, and
movements. Hence, ere he is aware, the evil is too far developed to admit
of a remedy.
It does appear to me that revival preachers should be exceedingly honest
with themselves on this subject and, withal, very guarded, forbearing, mild,
and conciliatory in their manner of speaking and preaching, especially
concerning those who oppose their views and measures. It is often better
to take no public notice whatever of opposition, and especially not to
allude to opposers, and by no means to speak of or pray for ministers or
Christians in such a way as may blow up into a flame the latent sparks of
fanaticism that are smothered in so many bosoms.
In thinking of this subject, in looking over the state of the Church, in
reading the history of revivals of religion in all ages, I have been struck
and deeply affected with the innumerable instances in which promoters of
revivals have erred in substantially the manner I have described. They have
unwittingly imbibed more or less of a spirit of fanaticism themselves, and
it manifests itself so much in their public efforts as greatly to mar the
work of the Lord, and of course to grieve the Spirit of God. Indeed, some
revival preachers appear to me to have forsaken the right way without
being aware of it, and really to have become highly fanatical in their spirit,
preaching, and general bearing, until God has manifestly been obliged to
rebuke them by withdrawing His Spirit, and closing the doors of the
church against them. If revivals of pure religion are to be preserved from
fanaticism, the utmost pains should be taken to preserve the leaders from
this spirit. It is one of the grand devices of the devil to infuse this spirit
stealthily into the leaders, and thereby poison the revival to death.
In what I have said, I would not be understood to intimate by any means
that revival preachers alone have fallen into this error, for I am very
confident that they have not so frequently fallen into it as some who have
never promoted revivals of religion. The latter have more often fallen, for
the reason that their general strain of preaching has so much of jungling, of
controversy, of rebuke, censoriousness, and bitterness against all who
differ from them. that the Spirit of God seldom if ever refreshes the
heritage to which they minister. I have known several such ministers, who
were far enough from being revival preachers, and whose preaching tended
only to revive and perpetuate the spirit of fanaticism and rebuke. But
what I have intended in this letter is, that revival preachers themselves
have sometimes fallen into this error, which is so common with many
other preachers.
Indeed, sectarianism in all its forms is only a modified species of
fanaticism, as might easily be shown; and revival preachers who have
connected sectarian movements with their revival operations, have
perhaps uniformly shown that a fanatical spirit was the result.
My brethren, let us be careful that our own spirit is heavenly, Christ-like
- that we have the wisdom that cometh down from above, which is "first
pure, then peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits." Let us labor in
this spirit, and the result will show that we are workmen who need not be
ashamed.
LETTER VIII
EXCITEMENT IN REVIVALS
If I am not entirely mistaken, many excitements that have been supposed
to be revivals of religion. have, after all, had but very little true religion
in them. It seems to have been nearly or quite overlooked, that all religion
is love. And it is remarkable to see to what an extent, in some instances at
least, there is a manifestation of fiery zeal, often tinctured strongly with
bitterness and sarcasm, instead of the gentleness and sweetness that
characterize the true religion of Jesus. If you attend the meetings of any
kind, if you converse with the brethren, with the professed converts, with
any who are influenced by the excitement, you find that there is a strain of
evil speaking, fault-finding, and scolding, which is anything but the true
religion of Christ. There is, to be sure, a great excitement, a great deal of
bustle and conversation, a great many means and measures - in short, a
great deal of everything calculated to promote a certain kind of excitement.
There is, indeed, a powerful revival, but certainly not a revival of pure
religion. Sinners are speaking in great bitterness of Christians, and
professed Christians are speaking with very little less bitterness of them.
The preaching is very much in a strain of vituperation, and this begets,
almost of course, the like spirit and strain in everything else connected
with the excitement. There seems to be in it a deep, turbid, and bitter
current of feeling that is the very essence of fanaticism. The spirit of
Satan, instead of the Spirit of God, has, no doubt, been poured out on the
people. It has been an outpouring of a spirit, but not of the Holy Spirit of
God. It seems to be a going forth of infernal agencies, a letting loose of the
powers of darkness a season of deep delusions; and, what is surprising is,
that even good people are often for a time carried away with it, and for
weeks, and perhaps for months, do not discover their mistake. As a
brother, who had himself been laboring under this mistake expressed it, "I
have been trying to cast out devils through Beelzebub, the prince of
devils."
You will very often see the evidence of this state of mind in the very
countenances of those who are deeply excited. They look cross, there is a
deep dissatisfaction of mind manifested in their countenances. You go to a
prayer meeting, or other meeting where numbers who have this kind of
excitement are assembled, and you will see a dark cloud gathering on the
faces of the excited ones. Instead of that open, sweet, calm, meek, but
deeply solemn and humble state of mind which invariably shows itself in
the countenance, there is in the eye, and in all the features of the mind a
distracted, fanatical, determined look; a self-will and denunciatory
expression that seems to say "Stand by thyself, for I am holier than thou."
I hardly know how to describe what I have sometimes witnessed in such
cases. And perhaps I can not so describe it as to make myself understood
to any except those who, in the providence of God, have fallen under
circumstances to witness it. Sometimes this state of mind will not be
generally manifested in an excitement. Perhaps a revival of pure religion
commences, and there is no manifestation of this spirit at all. But I
scarcely ever saw a powerful revival anywhere without seeing more or less
of a fanatical spirit, in the course of the revival, manifesting itself in
some one or more cases.
If the leader in such revivals keeps himself entirely clear of this spirit,
and watches its development narrowly on every side round about, and is
entirely faithful and timely in private and personal expostulation and
warning, in the case of those who are seized with it, it can, no doubt,
generally he prevented.
It will not infrequently manifest itself at first in prayer meetings, if liberty
is given; or if liberty is not given for any one to pray who feels disposed,
you will sometimes see a man or woman break forth in a prodigiously
excited manner, and let off in a torrent of vituperation in their prayers.
There will be in it a strain of bitterness, that will be very shocking to all
who do not deeply sympathize with such a state of mind. Now if the
minister at once goes to that man or woman immediately after meeting, has
a plain and affectionate conversation, and sets before the individual the
true state of his mind, he may succeed, in the outset, in so opening his
eyes as to detect the delusion and save him from further evil. But if he
neglect it, the evil will spread rapidly, the delusions will increase in the
mind of the individual himself, and probably in the course of a few days,
or, at the utmost, weeks, it will completely change the type of the revival,
grieve away the Spirit of God, and let in a flood of infernal agencies to
desolate the Church.
I hope my brethren will not understand from what I have said and intend
to say on the subject of fanaticism, as it often appears in connection with
revivals, anything that shall give occasion to speak reproachfully of the
most faithful and pungent dealing with the consciences of backsliders and
impenitent sinners.
I am aware - and who that has ever seen revivals is not aware? - that
the spirit of complaining, faultfinding, and censoriousness, is by no means
confined to those who are endeavoring to promote the excitement of
revival, and that the spirit of fanaticism is by no means confined to this
class of persons. It is often more appallingly manifested among those who
partake not at all of the spirit of promoting revivals. It is very common,
indeed, to see the opposers of revivals, both in and out of the Church,
manifesting at such times a most turbulent and intolerant spirit, and a form
of fanaticism not less disgraceful and unreasonable than that to which I
have alluded.
Sometimes even ministers, prominent professors of religion, as well as
those without the Church and who are opposed to the revival or
excitement, or whatever its character may be, are seen to be filled with the
spirit of caviling, censoriousness, complaining, and fault-finding, and
whose minds seem occupied almost altogether with real or apparent, or, at
least, imagined defects in the spirit of those who are engaged in promoting
the work, or in the means used by them.
It is very common to hear this class of persons find fault with really the
most unobjectionable things. They seem to have the spirit of calling evil
good, and good evil. Anything like faithful and pungent dealing, anything
like a thorough searching and probing the heart of backsliders and sinners
to the bottom, is by them called abusive, personal, unreasonable,
vituperative, and such like things.
Now what I desire to say, brethren, is this, that there are great dangers,
and oftentimes great errors, on both sides, to be apprehended and guarded
against. I have already intimated that the spirit of fanaticism, as it appears
in those who are endeavoring to promote a revival, is generally provoked
and developed by a spirit of fanaticism opposed to the revival. An
unreasonable opposition on the part of others, seems to develop,
oftentimes, in those who are trying topromote the work, a spirit really
hostile to the work itself.
For my own part, I have seldom seen a spirit of fanaticism manifest itself
among promoters of revivals, only as it was provoked and developed by a
spirit of opposition to revivals. When opposition takes on certain forms,
and is found to exist among ministers and leading professors of religion,
there is then the greatest danger that the good and praying people will be
overcome of evil, instead of overcoming evil with good. This should be
always guarded against.
I have yet many things to say on the subject of the appearance of a
fanatical spirit, in connection with revivals. The particular thing to which I
would now call the attention of the brethren is this: There is a class of
persons, in seasons of deep excitement, and especially when there is a
good deal of preaching on the necessity and reality of Divine influences,
the spirit of prayer, being led by the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit,
etc., who are extremely apt to give themselves up to be led by impulses.
Mistaking the true manner in which the Spirit of God influences the mind,
and not realizing that He enlightens the intelligence, and leads the Christian
who is under His influence to be eminently reasonable and rational in all
his views and movements, they are looking for the Spirit to make direct
impressions on their feelings, and to lead them, through the influence of
their feelings, and not through the intelligence. Hence they are very full of
impressions. One has an impression that he ought to do such a thing, or
say such a thing; to go to such a place; to visit a tavern, for instance, and
converse with the inmates of a barroom; or to go and rebuke a minister; or
to tell the elders or deacons of the Church that God has revealed it to him
that they are right in the way of the revival - in short, there is no end to
the forms in which these delusions appear.
Sometimes they are impressed with the conviction that they ought to get
up and interrupt the speaker during public preaching, or that they ought to
break forth in prayer under circumstances that would manifestly introduce
disorder, - and many such like things, are very liable to occur in seasons
of deep excitement in revivals of religion. Sometimes they will have
particular views presented to their imaginations - that such a minister is
right in the way, and leading all the souls under his influence down to hell;
that terrible judgments are coming on the place; that the revival is about to
cease; or that some other terrible thing is about to take place.
Now if this spirit is watched, it is remarkable to see how uniformly it will
take on a severe, denunciatory, and turbulent type. It is remarkable to see
how often it will manifest its principle hostility and opposition towards
the leading and most efficient influences that are at work in promoting a
genuine revival of religion. If this spirit be narrowly watched, it will soon
be seen, that it is really opposition to all that is truly good in the work,
and that oftentimes its opposition to the highest and best influences
employed by the Spirit in the promotion of the revival is truly shocking.
Probably few persons who have seen powerful revivals of religion have
not witnessed, with pain and astonishment, things similar to these I have
described.
Now these things are exceedingly dangerous in a revival, for the reason that
they often appear among those who have been regarded as most engaged in
the work, most spiritual and prayerful. They often occur in connection
with experiences, or rather succeed experiences, that were manifestly truly
Christian and highly spiritual.
Now with respect to these things, let me remark:
1. That oftentimes when persons are really in a spiritual frame of mind,
when they are really simple-hearted, unsuspicious, and willing to be led in
any direction, Satan often succeeds, by transforming himself into an angel
of light, in persuading them to give themselves up to impulses and
impressions; and from that moment, he leads them captive at his will.
2. I remark that, as a general rule, the influence of Satan in these things
may be distinguished from the influences of the Holy Spirit by this - a
mere impression that you must do this or that thing, go and converse with
this person or that person, go to this place or that place, is by no means to
be regarded. When the Spirit of God leads an individual to take a peculiar
interest, feel peculiar compassion and drawing of heart in prayer and labor
for particular individuals, this influence may be safely trusted. If you find
yourself drawn out in mighty prayer for certain individuals, exercised with
great compassion, agonized with strong crying and tears, for a certain
family or neighborhood or people, let such an influence be yielded to. If it
is all compassion, an affectionate zeal for their salvation, a deep and
affectionate interest in their spiritual welfare, you may safely take it for
granted that this is from God, and give the mind and the outward
developments up to its influence, and put forth all the efforts that may
appear reasonable to secure their salvation. But let mere impressions,
unconnected with love, compassion, with the spirit of prayer, etc., be
strongly guarded against; for to say the least, as a general rule, such
impressions are not from God. It would not, perhaps, be too much to say
that they never are. God's Spirit leads men by the intelligence, and not
through mere impressions made on the sensibility. When the guilt and the
danger of an individual is strongly set before the mind, when the great
value of his soul is made to be clearly apprehended, when the heart is
drawn out in prayer for his conversion and salvation, - this is indeed
from God. I have known some cases where persons have rendered
themselves highly ridiculous, have greatly injured their own souls and the
cause of God, by giving themselves up to an enthusiastic and fanatical
following of impressions.
LETTER IX
WHY SO FEW REVIVALS?
I am rejoiced to perceive that the inquiry is beginning to agitate the
Church, "Why are there not more revivals, as well as why is their
character so changed?" The inquiry is also made, "What can be done to
promote them, and to promote them under a desirable and permanent
type?"
Now, my dear brethren, I hope and trust that you will not be offended
with me if I speak my mind on this subject with great plainness. The
circumstances of the Church, the decline of revivals, and the whole aspect
of the Christian world, demand it.
I have seen in the public papers various reasons assigned for this
declension of revivals, this absence of revival influence, this powerless
preaching of the gospel.
Now it does appear to me that we who are ministers, instead of looking
abroad and searching for the fundamental difficulty beyond and out of
ourselves, should see that whatever else may be an occasion of the great
falling off and decline in revivals, our own spiritual state is certainly
one, if not the primary and fundamental, reason of this decline. Want of
personal holiness, unction, power in prayer, and in preaching the Word, the
want of holy living and consecration to the work of self-denial, and energetic
effort in the ministry, - these, no doubt, are the principal reasons why
revivals are so few and far between, and of so superficial character at the
present day.
The fact is, ministers have turned aside, in a great degree, to vain janglings;
have given up their attention to Church politics, Church government, and
ecclesiastical proceedings of various kinds. The ministers have been
diverted, to an alarming and most injurious extent, from promoting revivals
of religion out of the Church and holiness in the Church.
I appeal to you, my brethren, of all denominations, if it is not a fact in
your own experience and observation, that ministers have to a great and
alarming extent suffered themselves to be diverted from the direct work of
promoting the conversion of sinners and sanctification of the Church. This
is too notorious to need any proof. The journals of the day, the
movements of ecclesiastical bodies, the doctrinal collisions, and - shall I
say? - ambitious projects, that have come up and figured before the
public within the last few years, bear no dubious testimony to the fact
that the great mass of ministers are turned aside from promoting revivals
and the holiness and entire consecration of the Church.
Now, my beloved brethren, while this is so, does it not become us to take
this home, confess it, bewail it, and first of all understand that whatever
else needs to be corrected and set right, we must ourselves repent and
receive a new unction for the work?
Beloved brethren, it is of no use for us to go abroad and search for reasons,
while the principal of all the reasons lies at our own door. While our hearts
are cold, our zeal in revivals abated; while we are turned aside, and running
here and there to attend Conventions, Councils, ecclesiastical bodies; while
we are engaged in reading the vituperative publications of the day, and
entering into Church politics and jangling about Church government and all
these things - it is no wonder that both the Church and the world are
asleep on the subject of revivals.
Until the leaders enter into the work, until the ministry are baptized with
the Holy Spirit, until we are awake and in the field with our armor on, and
our souls anointed with the Holy Spirit, it certainly ill becomes us to be
looking around at a distance for the cause of the decline of revivals.
I have no doubt that there are many causes which, the Lord willing, we
will search out. But this is the first, the greatest, the most God -
dishonoring of all - that the ministry are not in the work, that the
shepherds have in a measure forsaken their flock; that is, they are not
leading them into the green pastures and beside the still waters, are not
themselves so anointed and full of faith and power as to be instrumental in
leading the Church into the field for the promotion of revivals.
To a considerable extent the Churches seem not to be well aware of the
state of the ministry, and for the reason that they themselves are in a state
of decline. The decline of vital godliness in the ministry has been, of
course, the occasion of so much decline in the Churches that they are
hardly aware either of their own state or of the spiritual state of the
ministry.
Now, my dear brethren, I hope it will not be said that, by writing in this
way, I am letting down the influence of the ministry and encouraging a
fault finding spirit in the Church. I would by no means do this. But I think
that we may rest assured that, unless we are frank enough, and humble
enough, and honest enough, to look the true state of things in the face,
confess, forsake our sins, and return to the work and engage in the
promotion of revivals, God will undoubtedly rebuke us, will raise up other
instruments to do His work, and set us aside; will alienate the heart of the
Churches from us, destroy our influence with them, and raise up, we know
not whom, to go forth and possess the land.
Among all the Conventions of the present day, I have thought that one of
a different character from any that have been might be greatly useful. If we
could have a Ministerial Convention, for prayer, confessing our faults one
to another, and getting into a revival spirit, and devising the best ways and
means for the universal promotion of revivals throughout the length and
breadth of the land, I should rejoice in it. It has appeared to me that of all
the Conventions of the day, one of this kind might be the most useful.
What shall we say, brethren? Are we not greatly in fault? Have not the
ministry, to a great extent, lost the spirit of revivals? Is there not a great
lack of unction and power amongst us? And have we not suffered
ourselves to be greatly and criminally diverted from this great work?
If so, my dear brethren, shall we not return? Shall we not see our fault,
confess it to the Churches, to the world, and return, and, in the name of
the Lord lift up our banner?
I hope my brethren will bear with me, while I further insist on the general
delinquency of ministers, especially of late, in regard to revivals.
There has been so manifest and so lamentable a falling off from a revival
spirit among the ministers of Christ as to become a matter of general. If not
universal, observation. Nothing is more common than the remark that
ministers, as a general fact, have lost the spirit of revivals, have become
very zealous in ecclesiastical matters, censorious, afraid of revivals, of
revival men and measures, and that they do little or nothing directly for the
promotion of revivals of religion. Now I do not think that this is a
universal fact, but as a general remark it is too obvious to need proof, and I
think must be conceded by all.
Now, dearly beloved brethren, unless there is a spirit of a revival in the
ministry, it is in vain to expect it in the Church. The proper place for the
shepherd is before or in advance of the sheep. The sheep will follow him
whithersoever he goes; but if he attempt to drive them before him, he will
scatter them in every direction. If the shepherd fall away from a revival
spirit, the sheep will naturally decline also. If he advance in the work of
the Lord, they will almost as a thing of course follow him wherever he
leads.
The greatest of all difficulties in the way of the promotion of revivals has
been a superficial work of grace in the hearts of ministers themselves. If
this is not true, I am greatly mistaken.
My brethren, believe me, I speak not this censoriously. or in the spirit of
fault-finding; it is the full and deliberate conviction of my own mind - an
opinion formed, not hastily, but from protracted observation, and from an
intimate acquaintance with great numbers of the ministers of Christ of
different denominations.
While the ministers of Christ are filled with the Spirit of God, the Church,
as a general thing, will not backslide. I say as a general thing. There may, in
some instances be influences brought to bear on the churches that will
divert them from the promotion of holiness in their own hearts and the
conversion of the impenitent, in spite of all that the most wakeful and
vigilant ministry can do. Great political excitements, great commercial
embarrassments, great depressions or elevations in the business and
pecuniary state of the Church or the world, may, in a great measure, divert
the mass of professors of religion for a time from deep spirituality,
although the ministers maybe awake. And yet it is my deliberate opinion
that a thoroughly wakeful, prayerful, energetic ministry, by their
influence, would generally, if not universally, prevent all the calamities and
disturbances, by so deeply engaging the Church and the community in
general on religious subjects, that war, great political excitements, great
commercial excitements, speculations, or embarrassments, would not be
likely to occur. However this may be, I can not believe it to be otherwise
than a general truth, that if the ministry are baptized with the Holy Spirit,
and deeply anointed with the revival influence, so the Church will be -
"Like priest like people."
And now brethren, it does seem to me that when we ourselves are
thoroughly in a revival spirit, our call to the Churches to arise and engage
in the general promotion of revivals will be immediately responded to on
the part of the Church. Let the ministry only come out in the true spirit of
revivals, and I doubt whether any minister in the land can preach for three
Sabbaths to his Church, in the Spirit, without finding the spirit of revival
waking up in the Church. Let this experiment once be tried; let us wake up
to the importance of this subject, confess and forsake our own sins, and
cry aloud to the Church, and spare not: let us lift up our voice like a
trumpet, and rally the host of God's elect; and if they are deaf to the call,
then let us inquire most earnestly what is next to be done. But until we are
anointed to the work, do not let us tempt the Lord or abuse the Church,
by looking out of ourselves and away from ourselves for the cause of
decline in revivals.
Do not misunderstand me. I know that the Church id in a state of decline,
and needs greatly to be quickened and aroused; but I am confident that the
prime cause of this decline in the Church is to be found in the fact that the
ministers have been diverted from their appropriate work. And I am also
confident that the only remedy for this state of things is, first and
foremost of all, for ministers to come into a deeply spiritual and revived
state of mind. And as soon as this comes to pass, there will be a general
revival. And I am not looking for it to come unless ministers do thoroughly
wake up to their own state and the state of the Church.
LETTER X
CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF REVIVALS
Another cause of the decline of revivals, in my estimation, is, that a right
course has not been pursued with the Churches. In some instances they
have been urged to labor and visit, and put forth active efforts for the
conversion of sinners, while they have had very little wholesome food to
live upon. Much labor has been demanded with too spare a diet. They
have heard very little else than mere legal preaching. Ministers have been
preaching almost exclusively to the impenitent, and perhaps for months
have given the Church scarcely one wholesome meal of the real gospel. If
Christians are to labor for God and souls, they must be fed with a plenty
of the bread that cometh down from heaven; they must be made to know
and feel where their great strength lies; must have Christ, in all His offices,
and relations, and fullness, frequently presented to them. If this course is
not pursued, their own piety will not only greatly suffer, but they will
come into a legal spirit, and all their efforts for the conversion of sinners
will be only bustle and legality; and in this state they may encompass sea
and land to make proselytes and fill the Church with spurious converts.
If I am not entirely mistaken, this has been, to an alarming extent, the fact
in revivals that have prevailed within the last few years. Christians have
had so little of the gospel that they have become legal, self-righteous,
blustering, carnal, mechanical, unbelieving; and their efforts have made
converts like themselves; which has brought revivals into great disrepute.
Again, ministers, by preaching too exclusively to the impenitent, and
dwelling so little on the marrow and fatness and fullness of the gospel,
have greatly suffered in their own piety - have themselves become, in
many instances, legal, hard-hearted, and censorious. In this state they can
not promote true revivals of religion. Not living themselves on Christ, not
dwelling in God and God in them, they are in no state to feed the Church
or promote true and thorough revivals of religion.
Again, there has been so great a fear of Antinomianism among ministers,
for the last few years, that I fear they have greatly neglected to hold up the
real fullness and perfection of a present gospel salvation. Many of them
have been misled entirely by false statements that have been made in
respect to Antinomianism, in the public journals which they take and read.
I have been astonished, as I have been abroad, to find how much
misinformation was afloat in regard to the real views which we have here
entertained and inculcated, and the results of exhibiting our views to this
and other Churches. This misinformation has led a great many ministers to
feel it necessary to guard their people strongly against error in this
direction. And in exposing what they have supposed to be the errors of
Perfectionists and Sanctificationists, they have practically greatly lowered
the standard of gospel holiness in their own Churches. I mean this has
been the practical result. Preaching against the doctrine of entire
sanctification in this life, and holding out the idea, as many have, that
Christians are expected to sin as long as they live - the practical result
has been a perpetual backsliding on the part of their Churches. Prejudice
has been created against the doctrine of sanctification in the Church; and, if
I am not mistaken, ministers have greatly suffered in their own piety, in
consequence of this course. And a consequent and corresponding descent
in spirituality has been manifest in their Churches.
I am fully persuaded that my brethren in the ministry will find it
indispensable to insist on entire holiness of heart and life, as a practical
attainment in this world, or they can never sustain a healthy piety in their
Churches.
My dear brethren, you may try it as long as you will; but if you take any
lower ground than this, your Churches will backslide until you yourselves
will be appalled by the result. I am perfectly satisfied, from long
experience, that there is no other way but to lodge the deep impression in
the Churches, that they are not only required, but expected, to "cleanse
themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in
the fear of God." All pleading for sin, or any thing that has the practical
tendency of denying the practicability of attaining this state in this life, is
the greatest and most ruinous error that can be inculcated on the Churches.
As said an English writer not long since, "No error is so destructive, and to
be so greatly denounced, as that Christians are expected to sin during this
life."
My beloved brethren, in what I now say I am not endeavoring to win you
to my opinion; but I wish to fix your attention and the attention of the
Church on the fact; and to have you witness the results of inculcating any
lower practical standard than that which I have named.
The fact is, the Churches are going rapidly away from God for want of the
true bread of life; and because the ministry have, to such an alarming
extent, been guarding their Churches more against the doctrine of
sanctification than they have against sin.
I beseech my brethren to adopt a different course, and urge the Church
right up to holy living, and let them know that they are expected to obey
the law and the gospel of God. Try it, brethren, and you will find it to be
life from the dead to your Churches. Do not be afraid of Antinomian
perfectionism. It is not to me at all wonderful that, at first the true
doctrine of sanctification and Antinomianism should be confounded in
many minds, and that the defenders of the one should be confounded with
the defenders of the other. But, beloved brethren, is it not time for
ministers to understand, as clear as sunlight, the distinction between the
two, and no longer be prejudiced or alarmed themselves, and no longer
prejudice and alarm the Church, by confounding things that so entirely
differ?
I hope in what I now say, I shall not arouse the prejudice of my brethren
so that they will not further hear me in what I have to say, in regard to the
errors that have prevailed in the promotion of revivals of religion; and in
regard to the causes that have operated to make them so few and far
between, and of so superficial a character.
My dear brethren, my heart is full of this subject, and I have a great deal to
say. I beg of you to hear me patiently, and inquire honestly whether there
has not been a great error in the direction that I have just named.
Another thing that has acted very injuriously to the interests of revivals of
religion is, the false views that have prevailed in relation to the best means
of promoting them. And in respect to means, if I have not been mistaken,
there is a strong tendency to two opposite and almost equally injurious
extremes. On the one hand, many seem to be expecting to promote revivals
without the use of any special means whatever. Since revivals are the work
of God, they think it enough to follow their ordinary Sabbath exercises,
with their regular weekly or monthly lectures, occasional prayer meeting,
etc., and leave the event, as they say, with the sovereignty of God,
believing these means to be sufficient, or that God can work just as well
without any means whatever. They think it would be equivalent to taking
the work out of the hand of God, and attempting to promote revivals in
our own strength, to make any other efforts than the ordinary Sabbath
exercises to promote the salvation of souls. Now, it appears to me that
there is one principle of human nature here overlooked, which must be
regarded if we would successfully promote the kingdom of God. When
any one mind, or any number of minds, are excited upon any topic, if you
would gain their attention to any other subject, you must use means which
are, in their nature, calculated to interest and excite them. Now the whole
nominally Christian world are, and have been for the last thirty years, in a
state of excitement, tending to a great moral revolution. By moral
revolution, I mean the revolution of opinion, and the consequent
revolution of practice. Reform is the order of the day, and many questions
of deep interest are arising, one after another, to agitate the public mind,
and the providence of God is pressing the whole mass of mind with
agitating questions, and producing just about as much excitement as may
be healthfully borne. These questions are political and religious; indeed,
there is scarcely any subject of deep and fundamental interest to mankind
that has not its advocates, lecturers, and public journals, through which it
interests and excites the public mind. Now it is perfectly unphilosophical
to expect to so gain upon the attention of mankind as to promote revivals
of religion without making extra and protracted efforts. As the world is
using steam power to promote political agitation and reform, the ministry
must "lift up their voices like a trumpet," "cry aloud, and spare not," and
must multiply their efforts and their means in proportion to the excited
state of the world on its topics, until, by the blessing of God, they gain the
attention, and keep it, until the heart is subdued to God. It may be true
that in those places where excitement upon other subjects but little
prevails, revivals may be promoted without extra efforts; but if the Church
is expecting to promote revivals without great, powerful, and protracted
efforts, they will find themselves mistaken. The fact that revivals are the
work of God, instead of affording a reason for neglecting efforts, is the
very reason which renders them indispensable. God does not subvert, but
strictly adheres to the laws of mind in building up His kingdom and
establishing His government in this world. For us, therefore, to plod on,
and fear to use extra and exciting efforts to promote revivals of religion,
while the world is all excitement on other subjects, is unphilosophical and
absurd. It is true that great wisdom is needed to guard against indiscretion
and means of an unnecessarily agitating and exciting character, and means
that will rather divert attention from the truth than secure attention to the
truth; but means must be used; meetings must be multiplied. Preachers and
Christians must be themselves excited, and must be able to lift their voices
above the winds and waves of this world's excitements, until they rivet
attention, or they can never sanctify the heart.
LETTER XI
THE IMPOLICY OF SPASMODIC EFFORTS
Before I proceed further on the subject of my last letter, I wish to call
the attention of the brethren to an evil which seems to me to have greatly
grieved the Spirit of God, and to be at present a very effectual barrier to
the promotion of revivals of religion. I have already alluded to it in a
former letter, but wish more distinctly to dwell on it here. The evil to
which I allude is this - an amount of prejudice has been excited against
revival men and measures, that has greatly grieved the Spirit of God. It
does not seem to me to have been sufficiently considered that a mind
under the influence of prejudice can not have communion with God, and
consequently can not prevail in prayer, can not appropriate the grace that
is essential to our living in such a manner as to honor God. Now it can not
be denied that a course has been taken that has filled the Church,
throughout the length and breadth of the land, with a variety of prejudices
that are eating out the piety Of the Churches and preventing the
promotion of revivals. Ministers have, in many instances, doubtless
without designing such a result, been instrumental in creating prejudices in
the minds of their Churches that have shut them out from communion
with God. They are in an uncandid state of mind; they are committed, and
unwilling to hear with both ears and then judge.
Their prejudices extend to a great many subjects in some Churches. Great
prejudices are excited against the cause of abolition, moral reform, revival
men and measures, protracted meetings, New and Old School Theology,
sanctification, or antisanctification. Now it matters little whether the
prejudices are in favor of what is really truth or against it - if they be
really prejudices, and the mind be committed, and in an uncandid state, it
effectually shuts the soul out from God. Prejudice is prejudging a question.
And pre-judgment is what Christ intended to prohibit and forbid. He did
not design to teach that we should have no decided opinion, and form no
unwavering judgment in respect to cases, questions, and characters on
which we may be called to decide; but that we should not judge without a
candid, thorough, and charitable examination in every case.
Now, ministers of a certain combative temperament are, without being
aware of it, doing little else than preaching their people into the exercise of
a host of prejudices that promote anything but their real piety. I have been
shocked oftentimes on witnessing the prejudice evinced by ministers
themselves, and by professors of all denominations.
Now, brethren, if we would promote revivals of religion among our
people, we must fear to excite prejudices among them on any subject.
They are naturally enough prone to prejudices - to rush into one-sided
judgments, without our helping them into this ungodly state of mind by
our preaching. If we come out and warn them against this thing, and that
thing, and the other thing, denounce antislavery, moral reform, or even
colonization, or anything else, in a spirit and manner that creates
prejudices, we may think ourselves doing God service, and may please
ourselves when we behold our people very zealous for what we suppose
to be truth; we may form and guard their orthodoxy until they have zeal
enough to encompass sea and land to make proselytes to their opinions;
and when we have done, we shall perceive that they are only making their
converts twofold more the children of hell than themselves.
There is another class of Christians than those to whom I referred in my
last, that seem to me to have fallen into error opposed to that of which I
then spoke. This class, instead of taking the ground that no extra means are
to be used for the conversion of sinners and the sanctification of the
Church, seem to have settled down in the belief that nothing can be done
without protracted meetings, and the most exciting means that can be used.
Hence they seem to be for doing up all their religious work in protracted
meetings, giving up nearly their whole time to protracted effort, or a series
of meetings, during a small part of each year, and make little or no effort to
sustain the interests of religion, promote the conversion of sinners and the
sanctification of the Church, at other seasons.
Now it seems to me that this class of persons as radically misconceive the
proper and only healthful method of promoting religion, as that class of
Christians do to whom they stand opposed.
Now that a series of meetings, continued for days and weeks, may be
useful, and in some instances demanded by the state of things, I think
there can be no reasonable doubt. But as a general thing, it seems to me
that it would be more healthful for religion to have meetings for preaching,
and prayer, and promoting the spirituality of Christians, so frequently, at
all seasons of the year, as to secure the attention of the people, and yet so
infrequently as not to disturb their ordinary, or, to say the least, their
necessary duties in the relations which they sustain.
When I was first acquainted with revivals of religion, my own practice was
this - and, so far as I know, it was the general practice of ministers and
Churches which endeavored to promote revivals of religion: We added to
the services of the Sabbath as many meetings during the week as could
well be attended, and yet allow the people to carry forward their
necessary worldly business; and we went no further than this. I have seen
most powerful revivals of religion in the midst of harvest in a
neighborhood of farmers, and found that. it could be sustained by holding
as many meetings as were consistent with farmers securing their crops,
and no more. The grand error which seems to me to have prevailed for the
last few years is this: Churches that are attempting to promote revivals,
break in for a time on all the ordinary and necessary duties of domestic,
commercial, agricultural, and mechanical life; and make every day a
Sabbath for a great number of days in succession, and then it seems to be
necessary to hold no meetings for a long time except on the Sabbath.
They have neglected their worldly business so much and so long, that now
they must make as much extra effort to bring up the arrears in that
department, as they have made in their protracted meeting to bring up the
arrears in the spiritual department. They go from one extreme to another,
from holding meetings every day in the week to holding meetings, on
which there is any thing like a general attendance, no day in the week; from
going to meeting nearly all the time until they have greatly neglected their
worldly business. they break off and go to meeting at any time except on
the Sabbath. Now it does seem to me that this is entirely unwise, and that
its results are demonstrating to the Churches, that the action of this course
of things is not healthful. and that a better course would be to keep up as
many meetings at all seasons of the year as can be sustained, and yet the
necessary secular business transacted.
As excitement increases on other subjects, we shall find it necessary in the
same proportion to increase the frequency and urgency of our appeals to
mankind on the great subject of salvation. As I said in my last, if worldly
men increase the means of exciting the people on worldly subjects, we
must, at least in equal proportion, multiply the means for securing the
attention of men to spiritual subjects. This seems to me to be a law of
mind; and instead of this being set aside by the fact that revivals are
produced by the Spirit of God, and instead of its being thereby rendered
unnecessary to multiply means - inasmuch as means are essential to the
Spirit's work - they must be multiplied, if we expect Divine influence to
produce the desired result. Ministers have perceived with pain that
through the instrumentality of protracted meetings the Churches are taking
on more and more the type of a spasmodic and temporary excitement on
the subject of revivals, seizing on those seasons of the year when they
have but little else to do, or neglecting whatever they have to do. and
giving themselves up to a protracted effort. going to meetings day and
night for a few days or weeks, and then relapsing to no effort. Whereas the
Churches should make a steady effort, and put forth their energies every
day, to secure the attention of people in proportion to the exciting topics
on other subjects that are so pressed on them by worldly men, and
worldly influences, as to endanger their very souls.
LETTER XII
HINDRANCES TO A REVIVAL SPIRIT
Another thing that is working an immense evil at present is, the growing
sectarianism of the Church. It seems to me that the leading denominations,
that have heretofore been most zealous and successful in promoting
revivals of religion, are, within the last ten years, becoming highly sectarian
in their spirit and measures. The collision and sectarianism manifested by
the former leading denominations does not, I should think, increase in its
degree or virulence, but these leading denominations are becoming divided
amongst themselves, and seem to be very much given up to the spirit of
schism and sectarianism. There is High Church and Low Church, Old
School and New School, Reformers and Conservatives, in all the
denominations; and these seem to be pressing their peculiarities in a spirit,
and by measures, that are highly sectarian. Sectarian Conventions,
Ecclesiastical Meetings, Councils, Synods, and all the parade and
paraphernalia of sectarianism, seem to an alarming extent to be engrossing
the mind of the Church.
Now this is certainly a great evil, and unless a counteracting influence can
be brought to bear on the Churches; unless ministers cease from this
sectarian spirit, cease from these janglings and strife of words, cease from
creating prejudices; cease from heresy hunting, and all the management of
ecclesiastical ambition, and give themselves up directly to promoting
brotherly love, harmony in the Church, the conversion of sinners and the
sanctification of the saints - it is certain that revivals of religion can not
exist, neither go forward in purity and power. What is peculiarly affecting
in view of this state of things is, that ministers and many Christians have
become so thoroughly sectarian, and are so thoroughly and deeply imbued
with the spirit of sectarianism, as to be wholly unconscious that they are
sectarian. They seem to suppose that it is a pure love of the truth, that
they are only contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the
saints, that they are really and only jealous for the honor of God and the
purity of the Church. They have exalted their peculiar views, in their own
estimation, into fundamental doctrines, and contend for them with as much
pertinacity and vehemence as if all must be reprobates who do not
embrace them.
Now it is remarkable that, so far as my knowledge extends, all the seasons
of great revivals with which the Church has been blessed from the very
first, have been broken up, and the revival influence set aside, by an
ecclesiastical and sectarian janglings to preserve what they call the purity
of the Church and the faith once delivered to the saints. I believe it to be a
truth, that ministers, as a class, have always been responsible for the
decline of revivals; that their own sectarianism, ambition, and prejudice
have led them to preach and contend, to run to Synods, Councils, and
other ecclesiastical meetings, until the Churches at first pained, and even
shocked, with this tendency of things, have come to adopt their views,
imbibe their spirit, and get entirely away from God.
My beloved brethren, who does not know that a vast many ministers are
too much under the influence of prejudice to have communion and power
with God? Who does not know that they are not sufficiently honest,
uncommitted, upright, wholehearted lovers of truth, to be thoroughly open
to conviction on every subject, willing to examine patiently, and to judge
charitably on every question on which they are to have or give an opinion?
I have in my own experience learned that, to maintain communion with
God, I must wholly give up prejudice on every subject. I must hold my
mind open to conviction; I must be thoroughly a candid and honest man. I
must not allow myself to have or express an opinion on a subject that I
have not carefully and prayerfully examined. There are many in these days
that seem to have forgotten what God has said of those that "speak evil of
things they understand not." And it is amazing to see to what an extent
both ministers and professed Christians are given up to denouncing and
speaking evil of things which they do not understand.
Now these ministers and Christians can not pray. God will not hear them.
They do not prevail with God, and everybody sees that they do not. They
are not men that have power with God and with men and can prevail.
They will denounce certain doctrines and certain things in a manner that is
unutterably shocking to those who certainly know that they do not
understand what they are talking about - who know that they are
confounding things that radically differ, and making distinctions where
there is no difference.
Now I might mention a great many facts and illustrations of this; but
almost every one is aware that it has been, and still is, perfectly common
for ministers and private Christians to persist in confounding the views of
entire sanctification which are entertained here with Antinomian
perfectionism. Now certainly those who do this, either do not mean what
they say, or they have not well examined the subject. They are speaking of
what they do not know, and speaking evil of things that they understand
not..
Now, my beloved brethren, I say not this to reproach any one. But who
does not know, after all, that this is true, or, at least who may not know
that it is true?
Now whether our peculiar views are true or false, it is wholly unfair to
confound them with views which we abhor as much as do these ministers,
though they fail to distinguish between the two.
Now if our views are untrue, let them be examined, and stand or fall on
their own merits. It may be convenient for those who oppose them to
confound them with Antinomian perfectionism, or with popery, or with
Universalism, or with any other ism, that will attach to them so much
opprobrium as to make the Church unwilling ever to examine them for
themselves. But let me say to my dear brethren, that, whether our views
are true or false, that way of disposing of them is certain to bring leanness
into your own souls, and into the souls of your Churches. And I ask of
you, brethren, if it is not, as a matter of fact, producing this result? When
you have been engaged in denouncing our views, or confounding them with
Antinomianism, or persecuting them in ecclesiastical meetings, or in any
way engaged in creating prejudices in opposition to them - I beseech you
to consider, have you not found that this was bringing leanness into your
own souls, that you were less spiritual-minded, had less communion with
God, less heart to preach the gospel, less unction in preaching, and more
and more of a sectarian spirit?
My beloved brethren, will you - ministers as well as laymen - candidly
settle this question by laying open your heart at the throne. of grace before
the Lord?
LETTER XIII
OBJECTIONS TO PROTRACTED MEETINGS
[It is not the thought of this chapter, that the work of soul-saving should be
put into a secondary place, and attempted only when there is nothing else to
do. Rather, it is meant that the duties of those who are expected to attend,
should be duly considered, and care be taken that a reaction against all
revival effort is not produced - Ed.]
I designed to have prepared a letter for insertion, previous to the one
which appeared in the last paper, continuing my remarks on the subject of
the use of means to promote revivals. I had said that there were two
extremes, and that some were expecting to promote revivals only through
the influence of protracted meetings and continuous efforts of that kind;
while others were opposed to all such efforts. I also animadverted
somewhat upon the tendency of certain Christians to compress nearly all
their efforts for the promotion of religion into a few days and weeks of the
year when they have little else to do, and do little or nothing for those
objects at any other season of the year.
After I had finished that letter, it occurred to me that it was liable to
misapprehension, and, as I said, I had designed to prepare the remarks,
which I now intend to make, to follow that letter immediately. But as the
one which appeared in your last was previously written, it has appeared
without my fulfilling my intention.
The remarks which I now wish to make are summarily these:
1. All our time is God's.
2. All business is to be done for Him.
3. Everything is to be done in its season. The Sabbath has its peculiar
duties, and so has the spring, the summer, the autumn, and the winter.
We are just as much required to labor six days as we are to rest on the
Sabbath. In other words, all our time is to be devoted to God.
Now it often happens that in certain seasons of the year, most men have
much more Leisure than at other seasons - that is, God has much less for
them to do with the ordinary labors in which He employs them. The
farmer, and indeed as a general thing all classes, have less of the common
business of life to transact in the winter than at other seasons of the year.
Now it is highly reasonable and proper, and no doubt duty, at such
seasons to have our time all employed in something that shall promote the
glory of God and the good of His kingdom. It is proper to hold more
meetings, to labor more in prayer and visitation, and in direct efforts for
the conversion of sinners and the sanctification of Christians, at such
seasons than at other seasons when our duties to God plainly call us to till
the ground, to gather the fruits of the field, or attend to any of the
necessary business of life. To do all duties in their season affords no
ground for the accusation that our religion is confined to protracted
meetings, is a religion of the winter or of leisure days, etc. By itself, this
affords not a particle of evidence of a spasmodical and intermitting
religion, any more than a man's going to Church on the Sabbath, and
working as God commands him to do through the week, is evidence that
his religion on the Sabbath is selfishness. The fact is, a man may labor
through the week for the same reason that he goes to meeting on the
Sabbath - namely, to obey and glorify God. Nay, he must do this, or he
has no religion at all. He must be just as devout and just as much
consecrated to God in his business as he is in going to meeting, or as he
ought to be in going to meeting, or he has no religion at all.
So the farmer, merchant, or mechanic may be, and is, bound to be just as
singly devoted to God, just as pious and holy in the labors of summer, as
in attending protracted meetings in the winter. The fact is, he is to do all
for God, or in reality he does nothing for God. Unless he acts for the same
end in the one case as in the other, and unless he acts in both cases with an
eye single to the glory of God, he is not a holy man at all.
Now there is no certainty that a Church is selfish because its members
hold protracted meetings only at those seasons of the year when their
duty to God, to their country, and to their families, does not call them to
other departments of labor. Whenever they can be spared from other
departments of God's work, let them lay their hands to this. If they have
any leisure time, let them then make extraordinary efforts for the
conversion of sinners and the sanctification of the Church. This is
reasonable, this is right, and I see not how this can be neglected without
sin.
While, then, it is true and ought to be lamented that there is no doubt much
spasmodical religion, or rather much that professes to be religion
connected with and sometimes growing out of protracted meetings, yet it
is by no means necessarily true that real Christians have turned aside from
their duty in holding protracted meetings at some seasons of the year, and
at other seasons of the year being very busy in laboring with their hands,
tilling their grounds, plying their trades, and serving God and their
generation in their secular employments.
I wish, therefore, that it might be distinctly understood that it is very
natural that revivals of religion should prevail at certain seasons of the year
when the minds of both saints and sinners are less occupied with the
necessary business of life. It is very natural and very important that special
efforts should be made at such seasons, and that revivals of religion should
be the result of such efforts.
It is therefore entirely out of place for the opposers of revivals and
protracted meetings to object to them, that they seldom occur except at
those seasons of the year when people have comparatively little else to
do. This is as might be expected. This is in a great measure as it should be.
While, therefore, I would recommend, as I did in a former letter, that
sufficient efforts should be made during all seasons of the year to keep
religion alive in the hearts of Christians, and to make aggressive
movements upon the kingdom of darkness in the conversion of sinners, I
would at the same time recommend and beseech my brethren to encourage
the Churches to make special and extraordinary efforts at every season of
the year, when time can be spared from other necessary avocations, to
attend more particularly to the great work of saving souls.
LETTER XIV
HINDRANCES TO REVIVALS
In noticing the hindrances to revivals of religion, I must not forget to
urge more definitely and strongly than I have hitherto done, the great want
of sympathy with Christ in the ministry and in the Church. It can not be
expected, and ought not to be, that the Spirit of God should be poured out,
and the labors of the Church and the ministry be blessed in the salvation of
souls, any further than there is a single eye, and a deep sympathy with
Christ in the hearts of those who are forward as coworkers with Him in
the great work.
The Bible abundantly teaches that it is time for God to work, and that the
time to favor Zion has come, when the Church "takes pleasure in her
stones, and favors the dust thereof." When the Church and the ministry
are deeply exercised with disinterested love to God and man; when they
have such love for the brethren that they would die for them, and such
love for precious souls as to be willing to toil and make any sacrifices, and
even lay down life itself for their salvation - then, rely upon it, their
labors will be blessed. And until they have this spirit, they may indeed
succeed in many instances in promoting an excitement, and what they may
call and may suppose to be a revival of religion; but, ordinarily, time will
show that, in truth, it was no real revival of true religion.
When Christians and ministers are not in sympathy with God, they are
not in a state to distinguish between spurious and genuine revivals of
religion. Hence they often go forward with a series of efforts until many
supposed converts are numbered, when in reality there is not a genuine
convert among them. The reason is, those who have been laboring in the
work have begotten children in their own likeness. Not having the Spirit of
Christ themselves, not being deeply imbued with the true spirit of revival,
they mistake their own excitement and the excitement around them for true
religion, when it is perhaps anything else than a real work of the Holy
Spirit. Now the more such efforts are multiplied, the more spurious
conversions there are, so much the more are revivals brought into
contempt, and so much the more deeply the cause of Christ is injured.
Now, I wish I could succeed in making the impression and fastening it, not
only on my own mind, but upon the minds of all the brethren, that we can
not expect to succeed in promoting true revivals of religion any further
than we are truly revived ourselves - truly and deeply spiritual - having
a general and all-absorbing sympathy with God; any further than we are
full of prayer and faith and love and the power of the Holy Ghost. There
are so many kinds of excitement that are unfavorable to genuine religion,
and yet so often mistaken for it, that no man can safely engage in
attempting to promote revivals of religion any further than he truly and
deeply communes with God and deeply enters into His sympathies. He
must go forth and labor in the very spirit in which Christ came to die for
sinners. He must have so single an eye that his whole body shall be full of
light - that he will have deep spiritual discernment, and be able in a
moment, in the light of God's Spirit shining in his own heart, to detect
every form and modification of spurious excitement. He wants to walk in
such deep sympathy with God that his spirit will naturally repel every
spirit that is not of God. There is, no doubt, such a state of mind as this.
But the thing which I wish more particularly to insist on in this letter is,
that the true revival spirit has been, in a great measure, grieved away from
the Church, and, as far as my observation and knowledge extend, efforts to
promote revivals of religion have become so mechanical, there is so much
policy and machinery, so much dependence upon means and measures, so
much of man and so little of God, that the character of revivals has greatly
changed within the last few years, and the true spirit of revivals seems to
be fast giving way before this legal, mechanical method of promoting them.
Now the thing that needs to be done is for every one who would attempt
to promote revivals of religion to be sure that he himself has a single eye,
has a deep inward talk with God, has the life of God so richly developed
within himself, as to be able, not only to prevail with God in prayer, but
to preach the Gospel to others with the Holy Ghost sent down from
heaven, in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
It would seem as if the ministers and the churches proposed to promote
revivals in the hardness of their own hearts, and without deeply breaking
up their own fallow ground. They get up protracted meetings and go to
work to promote a revival without beginning first in their closets and
thoroughly breaking down their hearts before the Lord, and getting all
melted and subdued, filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost. They seem
to expect that they shall get waked up during the meeting. They appoint a
meeting while in a backslidden state, and of course in a selfish state of
mind. They begin the meeting, and perhaps continue day after day, the
minister laboring for the conversion and waking up of the Church, while
perhaps he himself is crusted over, hard-hearted, full of unbelief,
worldly-mindedness, and with much respect to his own reputation as
being deeply concerned in the progress of the work. Thus the meeting will
continue day after day until they become considerably excited, have some
confessions, and perhaps a few real conversions; but upon the whole, they
have sowed among thorns instead of breaking up their fallow ground. Little
else has been done, perhaps, than to produce discouragement and disgust
in respect to revival efforts.
The fact is, brethren, a revival must take place among ministers. If there
could be a protracted meeting for ministers; if some hundreds of ministers
would assemble, and preach and pray and labor for each other's spiritual
welfare until there was a deep and thorough revival of religion among them;
if they would deal so faithfully with each other, and so affectionately, as
to get their hearts together, and together get into a deep sympathy with
Christ, - they would no doubt return from such a meeting to their several
charges, and the result would be a general revival of religion throughout
their Churches.
Brethren, what can be done to affect the ministry rightly, to bring them off
from this jangling and sectarianism, ambition, and every evil way, and
engage their hearts to live and die for Christ and for souls? O, this is the
great thing needed! If this can be attained, the day of Zion's glory has
dawned. But if ministers are to backslide and turn aside to vain jangling, to
Church politics and maneuvering, as they have for the last few years, I am
persuaded that God must either let the Churches under their influence go
into a state of still deeper degradation and backsliding, or else He must set
them aside, and introduce some instrumentality independent of them to
build up the wastes of Zion.
My soul is greatly troubled and my spirit is stirred within me in looking at
the state of the ministry. Brethren, will you let me speak in love? Will you
be offended with me if I tell you all my heart? For Zion's sake I can not
rest, and for Jerusalem's sake I can not hold my peace. Will the brethren
wake up and lay hold on God for a general revival of religion? When shall
it once be?
More than ten years since I was led, I think, by the Spirit of the Lord to
perceive that the course of things was tending rapidly towards the decline
of revivals. Especially in this respect - there was very little of the right
kind of preaching to the Church, very little done and doing comparatively
to elevate the standard of piety in the Churches and to promote their
permanent spirituality. Ministers, for the most part, were preaching and
laboring directly for the conversion of sinners. This was the order of the
day.
For a time. God greatly prospered this course; but as great multitudes of
young converts were introduced into the Churches, it was indispensable to
the continuance of a healthful state of piety that there should he very
much and very discriminating preaching to the Church, on the one hand,
and every encouragement held out to make high attainments in spirituality
and deep piety, on the other. I perceived that this was greatly neglected by
ministers in general, and that I had to some extent neglected it in my labors
from Church to Church as an evangelist; for in this course of labor, my
principal, and in many instances my almost exclusive, efforts were made
for the conversion of sinners. I expected that ministers and old professors
of religion would follow up these powerful revivals by a thorough course
of training of young converts. But I saw that my expectations in this
respect were by no means realized. and that consequently there was
comparatively little growth in grace in the Churches, and that their increase
of spiritual strength and of aggressive power was by no means
commensurate with their increase of numbers.
I believe it will be admitted by nearly all persons who are acquainted with
the facts, that the converts in the revivals to which I allude have been, to a
great extent, the strength and power of those Churches from that time to
this; and yet it is true that in those, and in all other revivals of which I
could hear, I perceived that they were not followed by that spiritual
culture and training which promises to make the converts deeply spiritual
and efficient Christians. The consequence has been that the converts in
their turn set about the conversion of sinners with but a superficial piety
of their own. Being untrained in deep spirituality and walking with God,
and not being aware of the wiles of the devil, the church to a great extent
fell into a mechanical method of promoting revivals, which I could not but
see would be attended with most disastrous consequences. Indeed, I saw
that the Churches generally were getting into such a state that they would
soon be wholly unable to promote true revivals of religion. I saw that they
were losing the spirit of prayer and power with God, and that the
tendency of things was to ruin revivals by substituting for them spurious
forms of excitement.
Under this apprehension of things, my own soul labored with great
earnestness and agony for a deeper work in my own heart, that I might be
able myself to exhibit more spiritual religion to the Churches, so far as I
had access to them. When it pleased the Lord Jesus Christ to reveal
Himself more fully to my soul than He ever had done, and to show me
heights and depths and lengths and breadths of the Divine life which I
never had perceived before, I was greatly impressed with the importance
of elevating the standard of piety in the Churches, and of promoting
among them a new type of religion, in order to have them become so
established in grace as to be kept from those temporary backslidings and
effervescings that were disgracing religion.
But I can never reveal to man my astonishment and sorrow when I found
that the ministry and the Churches were so generally opposed to efforts to
elevate the standard of piety among themselves. The cry was raised
immediately: Why don't you preach to sinners? Why don't you labor for
the conversion of sinners? Why are you endeavoring to reform the
Church? I was astonished to find it generally assumed that the Church is
well enough, and that the great and almost the only business of ministers is
to promote the conversion of the ungodly.
Now I must say that this appeared to me then, and has since, to be a kind
of spiritual infatuation. The state of the Church was fast becoming such as
to render it a hopeless effort to aim at the real conversion of multitudes of
the ungodly. The Church had been so little edified and built up in their
most holy faith, that they knew little or nothing of Christ except that He
had died as an atoning sacrifice. Of the indwelling and energizing of His
Spirit within them, of holy walking and communion with Him, of being led
by the Spirit, of denying all ungodliness and every worldly lust, of living
above the world, of entire and universal consecration, of being filled with
all the fullness of God, - of these and such like things they were
becoming, to an alarming extent, ignorant. Like people, like priest; the
ministers, to a great extent, were in the same state. This I could not but
perceive, and it filled me with unutterable agony.
I was not alone in this view of things. Here and there a brother in the
ministry, and many in the Churches throughout the length and breadth of
the land, I found had been led in the same way and had come to the same
conclusions.
And now, it does appear to me that the root of the difficulty that has
arrested the onward, prosperous, and rising course of revivals of religion
is, that the Church has been neglected. It has been too much assumed that
Christians would grow without food, would be established without
spiritual culture, would honor God without deep, experimental piety. It
seems to have been assumed that the Church would get along well enough
if they could only add greatly to their numbers by the conversion of
sinners. I have been deeply and unutterably grieved to find that efforts to
reform the Church have been looked upon so coldly, and in many
instances have been so deeply and bitterly opposed by multitudes of the
Church and by great numbers of ministers.
I have occasion to know that when the question has come up about my
being invited to preach in certain Churches, they have been willing that I
should preach to sinners; but they were not willing that I should preach to
the Church. Once, a written request was sent to me by a Presbyterian
Church to come and preach a course of lectures to the impenitent. I have
frequently heard of its being strongly objected to by ministers and leading
Church members that I should come and preach to Christians. They were
unwilling to have Christians reproved and searched, and deeply
overhauled, to the very foundations of their hope. I have often heard fault
found with that course of preaching which shakes the hopes of professors
of religion. This kind of preaching has been spoken of, again and again, as
so very objectionable that it was not to be tolerated.
Now when the ministers will take such a course as this, where will their
people appear in the day of judgment? What! Afraid to be searched, and to
have their Churches searched! Afraid to have the broadest daylight of truth
poured in upon them! "O," said one minister, as I was informed, when
requested to invite me to come and labor with his people, "I should like to
have him come if he would confine his preaching to the impenitent; but I
can not bear to have him rake the Church."
Now, beloved brethren, I have heard much complaint of the attempts that
have been made within the last ten years to revive religion in the Churches,
and to elevate the standard of piety among them. And is it really to this
day assumed that the Churches do not need reformation? Well, all I can
say to my dear brethren is this: You maintain this stand but a little longer,
and it does not need a prophet's ken to predict that your Churches will be
anything but Christian Churches. That they are even now tending rapidly
to a High-Church Spirit is but too manifest. Can it be possible that, after
all the developments that have been made, any of the brethren should be
so blind as not to see that a blow must be struck at the foundation? The ax
must be laid at the root of every barren fig tree. Ministers must turn their
attention to digging about and manuring these trees. An effort must be
made to search, revive, and purify the Churches. Old professors and the
converts of the recent revivals must be searched and overhauled; their
foundations examined, and their hearts entirely reclaimed. They must be
built up and spiritualized and established in grace so as to be living epistles
of Christ, known and read of all men; or to attempt the further promotion
of revivals of religion is vain, and worse than vain.
The fact is, brethren, that the resistance that has been offered to labors for
the reformation of the Church has been deeply exercised with disinterested
love to God and man; the Church has to a great extent refused to be
searched. They have refused to be reformed, and the result is that the
Spirit of God has left and is fast leaving them.
If I should say less than this, I should not speak the whole truth; but in
saying so much, I am not without my fears that I shall offend some of my
brethren. Dear brethren, I beg of you not to be offended with me, but
suffer me to speak the whole truth to you in love. Is it not true with many
of you who are ministers, as well as laymen, that you have refused
candidly to lay your mind open to reproof, to correction, to searching, and
to the light of the whole gospel of Christ? Is it not true that you have
resisted the reformation of your own heart, and the efforts that have been
made to revive the Church and to elevate the standard of holiness within
her borders? Have you not been more afraid of sanctification than you
have of sin, and have you not resisted efforts that have been made to
enlighten you and the Churches over which you preside? May God help
you, my brother, to be honest ill answering these questions! Have you not
in many instances, not only shut your own eyes against the light, but tried
to keep the light from the eyes of others? Have you not refused to read
what has been written on the subject of holiness in this life, and used an
influence to prevent others from reading? Have you not even spoken
against this subject, and spoken contemptuously of those whose hearts are
laboring and agonizing and travailing in birth for the recovery of a
backsliding Church?
My brethren, these are plain questions; they are intended to be. Could I
see you, I could ask you these questions on my knees; and would it avail, I
would wash your feet with my tears. My brethren, where are you, and
where are your Churches? What is your spiritual state? How stands the
thermometer of your spirituality? Are you hot or cold or lukewarm? Are
you agonizing to elevate the standard of holiness in the Church, and in
your own heart, or are you still assuming that the Church is well enough,
and looking coldly and contemptuously upon all efforts to revive her?
May the Lord have mercy on us, my brethren and search us all out, and
compel us to come to the light, to confess our sins and put them all away
forever, and lay hold on the fullness there is in Christ!
LETTER XV
THE PERNICIOUS ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH
ON THE REFORMS OF THE AGE
Another subject upon which I wish to address my brethren has respect
to an error which I fear, is greatly interfering with the progress of revivals.
I mean the fears that are so generally entertained respecting religious
excitement, and indeed excitements on any branch of reform. Many seem
to dread excitements greatly, and to be rather guarding against them than
laboring to promote revivals of religion.
I have before said something upon the subject of excitement; but I am
continually becoming more and more acquainted with the extent to which
these fears of excitement prevail, and the great consequent evils. Many
ministers seem to be so much afraid lest religious excitement should be
spurious, and are guarding so strongly against spurious excitement, that
they really prevent all excitement.
Now it seems to me that few things can be more directly calculated to put
down a revival should it commence, or to keep it down and prevent its
even commencing, than to be continually guarding the people against false
excitements, pointing out the marks of spurious excitements, and turning
the mind away from the great truths of the gospel by which men are to be
sanctified, to consider those spurious forms of excitement that have often
cursed the world. The fact is, that spurious excitements almost always
result from preaching error. Preaching truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, and especially those great and fundamental truths that are
indispensable to salvation, keeping clear of all admixture of error and
fanaticism, either in the doctrine taught or in the spirit of preaching, tends
in the highest degree to beget a wholesome excitement, and no other than
this. To arouse the attention strongly, and fix it upon those truths in their
soundness and power, is the most ready way to prevent all spurious
excitements, and to promote those which are sound, healthful, and
evangelical. Whereas, to neglect to preach this class of truths, and devote
oneself to guarding the people against spurious excitement, is almost sure,
either wholly to allay all excitement, or to arouse the combativeness of any
who have begun to drink in a spirit of spurious excitement, and drive them
still further from the truth.
The fact is, my dear brethren, a great many ministers and churches appear
to be too much afraid of spurious excitements to use any thorough means
to promote revivals. They are afraid to make a powerful appeal - are
afraid to lift up their voice like a trumpet, and blow a blast long and loud in
the ears of the people, and to press them with overcoming urgency to lay
hold on eternal life, lest they should promote a spurious excitement. If at
any time an excitement commences in the church, manifesting itself in
prayer and conference meetings, forthwith some overprudent elder,
deacon, or minister begins to throw out cautions against spurious
excitements. Now this is the very way to render revivals impossible. The
proper way is to guard against all those doctrines and measures that are
calculated to inflame the imagination and stir up an ocean of excitement,
without informing the intelligence; and to press most importunately,
frequently, and powerfully the real truths of the Gospel - those truths
which sinners and professed saints most need to know, and, if possible, to
rivet and hold them so thoroughly to those truths as to afford no room for
fanaticism, in doctrine or feeling, to get a footing. Then if at any time
suspicious things appear, the best of all ways to correct them, so far as
my experience goes, is, when it can be done, to labor in private with the
individuals who are under the false excitements, and, if it can possibly be
avoided, not to divert the congregation by preaching upon the subject. Let
the congregation be held fast by the great truths that are adapted to break
their hearts, and if a dash of fanaticism or enthusiasm appears now and
then, I would advise by all means, as I have said in a former letter, that
private interviews should correct these evils without letting the
congregation know that any notice has been taken of them.
The thing I am recommending is by no means to aim at promoting great
excitement. But it should be remembered that great revivals of religion can
never exist without deep excitement of feeling; and yet it is the revival of
religion at which we ought to aim; and since some excitement is naturally
and necessarily incidental to a revival of religion, let it come, and do not
fear it. Do let us remember and believe, my brethren, that the readiest of all
ways to prevent enthusiasm, fanaticism, and spurious excitements, is to
thunder forth with power and in demonstration of the Spirit the solid and
fundamental truths of the Gospel, both in season and out of season.
One thing I wish to press especially upon the brethren: The people will be
excited, and they will be excited on the subject of religion. If you keep out
that wholesome excitement which the naked and sound Gospel is adapted
to promote, you may rest assured that. sooner or later, spurious
excitements. or excitements that you can not control, will spring up among
your people, and will distract and carry them away as with a flood.
Brethren, this is no age of the world for us to dream that we can keep the
churches from excitement. They cannot be kept from it, and they ought
not to be. The indications of providence are plain and palpable, that the
excitements now abroad in the land are not to cease. Every turn in Divine
providence only multiplies the occasions and the means of excitement, and
it is madness for us to throw ourselves in the way of divine providence,
and suppose that we can correct this railroad movement of the public
mind. Our inquiry should be: How shall we guide it? How shall we so
control and promote it as to prevent evil and secure good results? How
shall we direct and keep it within its proper channels? To attempt to
arrest it were as idle as to attempt to cut off the waters of the Mississippi.
Dam it across in one place, it will break out and flow in another. If we
don't keep those mighty currents of excited mind in their proper channel,
they will desolate the whole land. Who does not see that if we succeed in
arresting excitement on one subject, immediately the waters swell and
break out in another direction? Another and another subject comes up, and
keeps the public mind in perpetual fermentation. Who can prevent it? No
man; and it ought not to be prevented. If ministers and professed
Christians, instead of taking advantage of the present state of things, and
making clear the proper channel and guiding the public mind right by a
powerful exhibition of the gospel - if instead of this, they will attempt to
arrest all excitement, they must expect their people to become divided;
factions and excitements will spring up; anarchy and misrule will prevail,
until ministers, the shepherds of the flock, have lost their influence, and
error and fanaticism carry away the public mind.
Brethren, we have the means in our hand of guiding the public mind, of
molding or modifying the excitements that overspread the land. Let
ministers and Christians take their station beside the pool of life, and lift
their voices above the winds and waves of popular excitement, and cry:
"Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no
money: come, yea come, buy wine and milk without money and without
price." Instead of being afraid of spurious excitement, with the experience
and the means that we have, it seems to me to be certain that the Church
can go forward in the promotion of revivals, without the introduction and
prevalence of one spurious religious excitement.
The gospel is adapted to promote a healthful excitement. Let us throw it
out upon the people in all its length and breadth and power. Then,
whatever excitement is incidental to such a procedure, let it come. Let
ministers and Christians be sober-minded, and hold fast to the truth and to
the form of sound words, and use those measures, and those only, which
are needed and are most adapted to secure a universal attention to the
truth, and bring about as speedily and universally as possible a thorough
submission to God. My brethren, do not let us stand timidly by, and
criticize and warn against false excitements, and hush everything down and
keep our people asleep, till, ere we are aware, they break loose from our
influence, and run headlong and in masses after some fanatical leader to the
ruin of their souls!
LETTER XVI
THE FOLLY OF ATTEMPTING TO SUSTAIN TRUE
RELIGION WITHOUT REVIVALS
Another subject on which I wish to address my brethren is, a tendency
which I perceive to exist in the public mind towards a conclusion which, to
me, appears little short of downright infatuation; namely, that the
Churches can exist and prosper as well without revivals of religion as with
them, or even better. Now this is certainly the most preposterous
conclusion conceivable; and yet I really know not what else to infer from
the general apathy upon the subject of revivals, and especially from the
quite extensive hostility against them which is apparent in many sections
of the Church. Many of the leading men in the Church seem about ready
to adopt, or at least are earnestly favoring, the policy of making no efforts
to promote revivals - of discountenancing the labors of evangelists, and
all those extra means and efforts that have been used from time
immemorial, whenever revivals have occurred.
Now that the Christian Church can not exist without extensive revivals of
religion can be clearly demonstrated; unless the Lord introduces a different
mode of diffusing the gospel from any that He ever has adopted. Nay,
indeed, the very supposition is absurd and self-contradictory. Must not
the Church be revived? Must not religion be revived among the
impenitent? If not, will not true piety well nigh cease from the world? The
nominal Church might exist, I grant, without revivals. They might
introduce another halfway covenant system, or receive hosts of ungodly
men into the Church without their giving any evidence of regeneration; and
thus a nominal Church might be kept up; but that true piety can not exist
and spread without a great and general revival of religion, and without
revivals succeeding declensions as often as declensions in any portion of
the Church shall occur, is, to my mind, one of the plainest truths in the
world.
I am sorry that I have not the means by me of stating definitely the real
results of those experiments that have been tried of promoting religion
without revivals - but who does not know that, in such cases, the
Churches have either become extinct or have become merely nominal
Churches, having only a name to live while really dead? They have
resorted to a half-way covenant, and various other means of filling up the
Church from the world, without their being truly converted to God. How
else could even the nominal Church exist? Christians continue to die, and
die, in fact, much faster than sinners will be converted to fill their places
without revivals.
I believe it to have been a universal fact that Church members have died
faster than sinners have been converted to fill their places where no means
have been used to promote revivals, and where consequently they have
not existed.
To what an extent revivals in this country from 1820 to 1840 influenced
the public mind, developed reforms, and brought up as from the depth of
oblivion the great truths and principles that are the sheet anchor of every
Government of opinion under heaven. The fact is, those revivals affected
all classes of the community. They affected the whole country, and have
extended their influence throughout all Christendom. This I have very good
reason to know, not only from my acquaintance with this country, but
from intelligence received from Europe.
These revivals were beginning, and indeed more than beginning, to
influence the legislation of all Christendom. But let them be done away, let
the generation that has witnessed their power go to their graves without
the recurrence of those scenes, and what will be the result? A Government
of mere opinion like ours, in the hands of a people who fear not God, with
a temporizing ministry, a licentious press, and all the agencies that are at
work to carry headlong all the religious institutions of the land - where
are we in twenty or in fifty years without revivals of religion? Witness the
efforts of the papacy. the tendencies of Puseyism, the efforts of
Universalists and errorists of every description, the running to and fro of
lecturers on every subject, the spread of infidel books and tracts, and all
the enginery of hell to overthrow all order and law and everything that is
lovely and of good report, and then say, my brethren, can the Church exist
and prosper without having repeated revivals of religion in its very midst?
But to come nearer home - can we or the present church become
anything less than an abomination and a curse to the world without
revivals? Whither is she tending already? Witness the gossip, the
worldliness, the pride, the ambition, the everything that is hateful, growing
up and prevailing in Churches, just in proportion as they are destitute of
the reviving influences of the Holy Spirit. Contemplate the cowardice, the
trimming policy, the ecclesiastical ambition of the ministry, without
revivals of religion - mark how great and overcoming are their
temptations to please men, and even ungodly Church members, when
there are no copious outpourings of the Spirit to arouse the multitude and
strengthen the hands of the servants of God.
O, it is impossible that desolation should not reign, that the ministry
should not cower down before an ungodly public sentiment, that popery
should not prevail, the Sabbath be desecrated, the Church ruined, and the
world undone, without great revivals of religion.
And what can this policy mean, that would hush everything down, and
frown on all special efforts to promote revivals? It is certainly infatuation,
and, if not arrested, it must end in ruin.
I beseech my brethren in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to keep as far
as possible from the appearance or the thought of discountenancing or
looking coldly on revival efforts. They are our life. They are the salvation
of the Church, they are the hope of the world. Instead of allowing them to
cease, every minister and Christian ought to aim at increasing them a
hundredfold. Every one of us ought to set his heart upon rendering them
pure, deep, universal, and as frequent as the necessities of the Church and
the world demand. Let no man stop short of aiming at this as he values his
own soul, and the souls of his fellow men.
FIRES OF REVIVAL
http://www/concentric.net/~fires/